by Sam Renner
His flashlight suddenly blinks off, and the room is dark again. Deep black. Lebbe beats the flashlight against his palm and tries the switch off and on. It does nothing. He takes cautious steps toward the wall, an arm out in front of him. Last thing he wants is to head nose-first into one of the pillars spread through the middle of the room.
His fingers find the smooth surface of the wall and he presses his palm hard into it, concentrating on the hum a distant memory now. All of his concentration is going toward finding the control panel again.
He runs his hand along the wall. The steel is cool, and it feels good on his fingers. He pushes harder, frustration beginning to slide from his shoulder past his elbow and into his fingertips. Keep walking. Keep pushing. Push harder.
A couple dozen steps and then the wall gives, like he’s pushed a dent into the solid steel. Lebbe stops. He pushes again against the wall. It gives. Another hard push and the wall opens. A sliver of light cutting the space in half, and a whole new aspect of Zulu opens. Behind what Lebbe can loosely call a door is a passageway. He pokes a cautious head inside. It follows the length of the room, branching off at least twice that Lebbe can see.
He hesitates for a moment, then steps into the passage and pulls the opening closed behind him.
+++++
McKibbon joins Grace and Martin in the mess just as Martin pulls something in a large vessel out of the microwave unit mounted into the wall.
“What is it, chef?” McKibbon says as he slides into the booth next to Grace. Martin sits in the seat across. He puts the bowl on the table in between the three of them, and they all look inside.
“It’s reconstituted … something.”
“Sounds delicious,” Grace says and gives the contents of the bowl a worried look.
“You’re spoiled,” Martin says and he stands and grabs bowls and spoons for each of them. He dips his spoon in to the bowl of whatever this is--it’s dark brown and the consistency of thin paste--and places a heaping helping into his own dish.
McKibbon follows suit, and the two men begin eating.
“How do you figure I’m spoiled?” Grace asks. She hesitantly begins serving herself, small spoonfuls gently ladeled into her own bowl.
“The Quickstop,” Martin says between bites.
“The convenience store,” McKibbon adds.
“You have access to food, real food. This kind of stuff was the staple of my diet for years,” Martin says and puts another mounding spoonful into his mouth. “I’m not going to argue that it’s great …”
“That it’s even good,” McKibbon interrupts.
“But it’s for sure nutritious. The government made sure of that. It’ll fill you up, and it’ll keep you moving.”
Martin runs his spoon along the bottom of the bowl, pulling any last bits of the dinner slop out of his dish. He turns the spoon over in his mouth, licking it clean. He stands and places his dish in the washer mounted under the cabinets.
McKibbon finishes next, although he isn’t as rigorous in getting ever final bite.
Both men sit back at the mess. McKibbon starts conversation while Grace finishes her meal.
“So,”McKibbon begins, “I know how things looked from this side, but tell me what you two saw over there. If this is pirates …”
Martin: “It’s some scary pirates.”
“That’s what you think then?” McKibbon asks.
“It’s not mechanical failure. That’s for sure.”
Grace: “And they didn’t just punch their way into the ship with some kind of battering ram.”
“These walls were melted, boss. Pools of cool metal on the floor. The kind of heat it would take to do that …”
“Yeah,” McKibbon says while Martin continues.
“... I don’t want to imagine what it took to generate that. And it was in two places on the ship, so it’s a technology that’s portable.”
“Two places?”
“It was also how they got into the cockpit,” Grace says. “They didn’t bust in the locks, they just made the door non-existent.”
“What do you think it is?” McKibbon asks.
“I don’t know,” Grace says. “We never studied anything like it in school.”
McKibbon gets up from his seat and goes to the refrigerator and pulls out three bottles of water, one for each of them. Grace and Martin crack theirs open immediately.
“This is going to sound crazy,,” McKibbon says as he sits back down, “but what if we are dealing with something else?”
“Something else like what?” Grace asks.
“Don’t say it,” Martin says. “You know it can’t be them.”
McKibbon delays his response. He knows it’s going to sound crazy, especially to two trained pilots. They were all trained to have a skepticism over anything that can’t have a logical explanation. They were trained to believe in instruments and what they can see. This. Well, this was something else.
“Aliens,” McKibbon blurts out.
Grace laughs. Martin shakes his head.
“It’s not aliens,” Grace says.
“And you’re sure about that?”
“I am,” Martin says. “I’ve chased aliens all over this galaxy for too long. I’d recognize aliens when I saw them. This wasn’t aliens.”
“Then what are we dealing with?”
“Pirates,” Martin said. “Really sophisticated pirates.”
“With a technology that none of us,” McKibbon points to Martin, “not even you, has seen before. And we don’t see it for the first time on some warship or used by some galactic naval vessel. No, we see it on some hauler floating all alone in the middle of nowhere.”
Martin and Grace look at each other, each searching the others face for some kind of answer.
“Well, yeah,” Martin says.
McKibbon sighs, unsatisfied with that answer. But he’s also resigned that he’s not going to get a better one.
“OK,” he finally says. “Go get that ship tethered up. Let’s get it back to Zulu.”
+++++
Martin is back in his armor. Grace is back in hers and going through a storage bin bolted to the Zulu hauler’s ceiling. She’s pulled a length of woven cord from it. She holds the coil of cord up for Martin to inspect.
He gives her an awkward thumbs up. “Yeah,” he says. “Looks good.”
His voice is tinny and thin, the speakers inside Grace’s helmet stealing all of the bass that usually found a home in the big man’s voice.
She tosses the cord over to Martin, and it unrolls as it flies. He catches what’s left of the coiled portion and heads across to the rogue ship and through the melted opening in the ship’s side.
She watches him work, and it hits her that this is the same guy she’d studied on video for hours in the tape room on Zulu. This is the same man she’d studied in class at the academy, whole semesters spent digging deep into his tactics with instructors dissecting every move, every decision. The same man who she’d spent countless hours in bars after class discussing his rumored exploits away from the pilot seat with classmates.
Now, she’s throwing him lengths of rope and watching him work to secure it to the rogue ship so they can drag it back to Zulu. He works quickly, efficiently, even on a mission like this that surely feels small considering all he’s done. But it’s not small for her. This is the work she signed up to do, and Martin is the kind of people she signed up to work with.
He knots the rope to a pair of supports then turns back to look at Grace then throws his hands up in exasperation.
“C’mon, Grace!” he shouts. “Tie off your end.”
She looks down at her hands and sees her end of the cord laced through her fingers. She turns and scrambles. Drops to a knee. Shoves to the side the armored suit the woman from the rogue ship was wearing. It ends up in a messy heap, arms on top of legs, back of the suit on top of its front. She looks quickly for anchor points connected to her ship’s body where she can tie her end of the cord.
A hand on her shoulder pulls her up and back to standing. It’s Martin. He takes the cord from Grace. He grabs a tree-trunk-thick pipe that drops out of a hole in the cargo hold’s ceiling and disappears into a hole in the floor. Martin ties a knot that Grace has never seen. He gives the cord a tug to test that it’s secure then heads into the sealed off portion of the ship to take off his armor a second time. Grace tugs on the cord. It’s snug, and she follows Martin through the door to the crew area of the ship.
SIX
Zulu is a blinking spot in the distance, and McKibbon punches buttons on the dash in front of him to set the hauler’s course. He exhales and leans back in the captain’s chair. This mission is essentially over. He’s glad. It was uneventful. But, he’s also a little disappointed for the same reason. This little spike of excitement could have been something else, and it’s that possibility that frustrates.
He starts playing out the possible scenarios.
It might have been an ambush that would have left his little ship and little crew outmanned and outgunned. He’d get back to Zulu having lost two, one of whom was a literal war hero.
Or it could have been a hauler with a full crew all needing medical help, and suddenly he’s left playing the role of ambulance driver.
Or the woman could have been dead, and instead of an ambulance he’d have been flying a hearse.
But he’s flying again, and that was important. He rubs the arms of the captain’s chair. The leather is smooth under his hands. He looks at the bank of instruments in front of him. The woman from the other ship is secure in the back. The ship itself is tethered tight to his hauler. Martin and Grace are off somewhere in the back of the hauler getting out of their gear. Who would be upset if he just flew this thing around for a bit? Martin and Grace surely wouldn’t. They can sit around doing a lot of nothing here or they could do it back on Zulu. He could talk his way out of trouble with Grey if she, for some reason, got upset that he didn’t come straight back.
He puts a hand on the controls. He looks at Zulu in front of him. He thinks long and hard about pushing the controls to the right or the left, to send the ship away from the distant station and out on its own course. His head says do it, but his arm won’t react.
Go, his head says again.
Go! His head screams louder.
All the voices from his past shout in unison: GO! But he doesn’t. Cargo-hauler joyrides aren’t him. It’s not how he got to be in the position he’s in as quick as he did, even if that position isn’t exactly the opportunity he’d been sold.
“Whatcha doing, boss?” It’s Martin.
“Lost in thought,” McKibbon says, turning to see both of his crew standing behind him.
“With your hand on the stick?” Grace asks. McKibbon let’s go of the controls and stands.
“Got us pointed in the right direction then my mind wandered. But were set. We’re pointed back at Zulu.”
Martin: “You need anything else from us?”
McKibbon looks back at the controls then shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
Martin again: “Then I’m going to go to the mess and relax a bit. Being in that suit takes it out of me in ways it didn’t used to.”
“Sure, you two are dismissed.”
Martin and Grace both turn and head back out of the cockpit. They get a few steps away when McKibbon stops them. “Actually,” he half shouts, “Grace, you hang back.”
She steps back into the cockpit. Martin gives them both a nod and disappears into the dark interior of the hauler.
“Sir,” Grace says.
“Relax. I just wanted to know if you’ve ever flown one of these things.”
“A hauler?” She steps past McKibbon and to the back of the captain’s chair. She runs her hands across the top of it. “No, sir. Nothing this big. Ran a couple of simulations back at the academy. Being in the real thing is a little different, but I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Well…”
“What?”
“Do you want to fly us home, Grace?”
“Sir? Of course.”
“Then the ship is yours.”
She steps to the control panel and takes a seat behind the stick.
McKibbon: “Not a lot to do right now I’m afraid. I got most of the flying out of the way. But there will be more to take care of once we get closer to Zulu and try to dock this thing.”
“Just any chance to fly …”
“I know, right? Enjoy it. Keep us headed straight. Think you can do that?”
Grace runs a light hand across the tops of the buttons in front of her. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’ll be back.”
+++++
The light is bright and blinding, and Lebbe instinctively drops his head once the door closes to shield his eyes from the shine.
Tunnels spread out before him, branching off to different areas like cracks in glass.
It’s an area of Zulu that Lebbe’s never seen, like so much else today. It’s a place that until moments ago he didn’t know existed. He wants to call it a tunnel, but it’s not that. A maintenance corridor? A shortcut passageway between storage areas?
Lebbe walks.
Forward. For now. None of these fingers that branch off from here. Not yet. Just see where this goes.
Lights dot the ceiling far in front of Lebbe and more pop on as he walks, each step seemingly triggering another bulb. Lebbe stops each time another tunnel branches off. Lights flash on near the intersection, and he looks as deep into the far dark as he can. The curious side of him wants to follow these new paths, to explore where they go and find out more of Zulu’s secrets. Not smart, though. You don’t have any breadcrumbs. Stay here so you can get back.
Lebbe’s path forks. To the left it’s a few feet of walkway then a ladder up. Lebbe walks over and looks up. The ladder disappears into the dark, but it can’t go up more than two levels. The path right is long and dark. Lebbe follows it. Lights pop on with each step, but after a few dozen feet Lebbe sees this tunnel ends at the edge of Zulu’s outer ring.
He turns and walks back, running his hand along the wall. His palm finds the soft spot, a door, and he pushes. Another storage room, this one small. He walks the walls in this room, sliding fingers across the metal until he finds another door. His curiosity gets the better of him, and he pushes it open and steps into another tunnel. This one is long and straight. He walks it until he finds another door and another storage room. Then from that room he finds another tunnel. Then another room and another tunnel until he comes to an end–a room without a tunnel.
This final room is small. More of a closet, and Lebbe wonders what it was designed to be used for. Keeping workers coats? Lebbe smiles at his joke. Chuckles.
He walks out the same way he came in and retraces his steps back through these tunnels and feels for the first time since he came to this ship almost two years ago that Zulu is something like home. These narrow spaces, these tight walkways that turn and twist off in every which direction are the alleys of home where he’d get lost as a kid. Those were the spaces he could call his own. Of course, they weren’t his. The tossed-away trash he dodged or the milk crates he used as a makeshift stool reminded him that he shared these spaces with businesses and thousands of others. But they were places that his parents didn’t come to, places that his brother didn’t come to. Places where he didn’t have someone over him telling him to not sit there or not touch that.
These tunnels give him the same feeling. These spaces are his. Grey isn’t here. She can’t tell him what to do. He doubts she even knows they exist. These outer rings are the empty spaces of the Zulu map. Everyone knows that the rings are there, but they are clueless about more.
Zulu will never be home. It will always be the place that he ran to in a moment of desperation without thinking through the consequences. It will always be an immediate regret, a mistake. But now, with a place that can be something of his own, maybe it won’t be his worst one.
<
br /> +++++
McKibbon finds Martin standing in the door of the sick bay. He’s staring at the woman still lying on the bed. The med bots have loaded her with tubes and filled her skin with sensors. McKibbon watches Martin for a moment, then he asks: “Scared she’s going to run off somewhere?”
“No,” Martin says. “I don’t know what I’m scared of, but it’s not that.”
McKibbon steps next to Martin and fills the other half of the doorway. Even if this woman were to want to run off someplace, she couldn’t now.
