by Sam Renner
“But something has you scared?”
“Scared’s probably not the right word, but I’m something.”
“Want to elaborate at all?”
Martin takes a step into the room and studies the instrumentation panel built into the wall. It’s all numbers and read-outs, and it means nothing to McKibbon.
“Something interesting there, doctor?”
“No,” Martin says. “It all looks pretty normal.”
“Oh, it does. Does it?”
“I’m not a complete idiot. Spend enough time away from home and in ships like this you get a lot of experience doing a lot of things. The middle of a big battle you get to look at a lot of panels like this. You start figuring out what you’re looking at as you watch friends succumb to injuries. You know what it looks like when these numbers go sideways.”
“Sorry,” McKibbon says. “I was just giving you a hard time.I didn’t mean …”
Martin interrupts him. “I know, man. Don’t worry about it. But it’s that experience that’s setting off something inside me. It’s not an alarm or anything…”
“But ...”
“But that ship we are dragging behind us is in rough shape.” Martin points to the sleeping woman. “She’s not.”
McKibbon steps out of the doorway and back into the walkway.
“What’s that got you thinking?”
Martin follows McKibbon.
“I don’t know that I’m thinking anything beyond it being unusual.”
McKibbon walks the dozen feet down the hall to the mess and steps inside.
“Sure, but why is it unusual?” He opens a cabinet door and pulls out two bright white ceramic mugs.
Martin answers while McKibbon puts one mug into an opening in the wall and punches a few buttons. Soon the room is filling with the smell of fresh coffee. “Because it doesn’t fit the patterns. Want to know why I’m still alive?”
“What do you mean?” McKibbon slides the first mug in front of Martin and asks if he wants cream or sugar or milk. Martin declines them all then continues the conversation.
“I’m still alive when all of my other friends are dead because I’m observant. I notice patterns. I pick up on tendencies. It’s not because I’m some fancy flying pilot. I’ve just learned quickly how to be where the enemy is not.”
McKibbon raises an eyebrow. “OK. I don’t know that I’m following.”
McKibbon scoops sugar into his cup and fills what room is left in the mug with cream. He stirs it, the spoon clinking the side of the mug.
He slides into the booth across from Martin, and Martin says: “Right now, I don’t know that I can say that. Something about her feels like the enemy.”
+++++
Lebbe has been in these pathways for hours. He’s followed them into room after room. They’ve begun to all feel the same. They won’t forever, just like the alleys back home. Walk them the first time and you can’t tell one from another. Then, as you go back and back and back again, they start to develop personalities. You notice the things that make them unique, a crack across the pavement or a break in the mortar. They all begin to look different. They all begin to look individualized.
But they don’t now, as he tries to trace his path back out to the outer rings. He got himself too wrapped up into the excitement of discovery that he lost track of where he was, and now he’s going in circles. He stops in the middle of one of the halls and stands still, getting his bearings. The lights overhead blink off one by one until he’s standing in what feels like a spotlight, and these interesting tunnels suddenly become a little more ominous.
His heart begins to beat a little faster. He tries to calm it by listening for the air handler or the water recycler, but he can’t find either. His Zulu symphony is nearly muted in these tunnels.
His heartbeat quickens. He looks left. He looks right. Neither direction looks like the way out. Neither looks like anything. They are just dark and empty halls.
His heart is sprinting. These dark walls closing in. He closes his eyes and forces himself to breathe. He counts those breaths. One in deep then out. A second in deep then out. A third. A fourth. His heart begins to slow.
A fifth breath. A sixth. He pauses, then a seventh. He listens again for the air handler or the water recycler. He concentrates and finds both. They are there, but they're faint. He listens hard,blocking everything out of his mind, and it's like someone is turning up the volume. Zulu's hum becomes louder, to the point that he hears nothing else. He's back. He's home.
He opens his eyes and heads right, suddenly confident that he knows the way out to the outer ring. Lights blink on as he heads through the corridors, pushing open doors and passing through rooms, until he's back in the initial corridor and it all looks suddenly familiar. He opens the last door and steps back out into the wide open at the edge of Zulu. He walks to the wall opposite the door and puts a hand flush against the steel. It's smooth and cool, but not the cold that he was half expecting.
“Don't be dumb, Jim,” he says to the empty space, his voice bouncing off the walls and supports and causing the room to ring. “You know that they aren't going to build this thing without a few feet of protection from the endless black.”
He goes back to the main door and heads two levels up to Zulu's main floor. He exits by The Quickstop, and he takes a seat at one of the tables away from the counter. Frank catches Lebbe's eye and shoots up a wave. Lebbe waves back and Frank mouths “Just minute.” Lebbe nods and turns his attention to the TVs above the counter. It's talking heads, and Lebbe's no good at reading lips. There's a woman, calm and collected, nodding agreement with something Lebbe can't hear. Another face in a separate box, this one a man's, is going red. His eyes are getting wide. His engine is clearly revving, and the guy is waiting to pull his foot off the brake.
When he does, it's just as Lebbe expects. The guy is shouting, fishtailing his comments and losing control before he can make his point.
The woman begins to respond just as Frank walks up with a plate of food that he slides in front of Lebbe.
“What's this?” he asks.
“A sandwich. Fries.”
“Ok, smartass.”
“Patty melt, extra cheese. Fries.”
Lebbe digs in, grease from the burger glistening on his cheek. Motives for being here aside, Frank has taught his boys to make a fine burger. Lebbe can’t even tell it is made with vat grown beef. With his eyes closed, it tastes just like what he’d get from a little diner around the corner from the police station back home.
“They been keeping you busy today? I’ve barely seen you.”
Lebbe nods while he finishes his second big bite of burger. “Grey has tasked me with a security sweep.”
“Security sweep? Is there something happening?”
“No.” Lebbe pinches a few fries and puts them in his mouth. “She’s just keeping me busy.”
“You’ll tell me, right?”
“Tell you?”
“If something were happening.”
“Of course.”
Lebbe takes another bite of burger and watches the TVs. Frank turns to watch them too. The gentleman who was on the verge of popping earlier seems to have calmed himself, at least some.
Lebbe: “What do you know about …” He pauses. He wants to ask Frank what he knows about the tunnels and little rooms, but he doesn’t. He can’t. Those are his, at least for now. He likes that there are secrets to Zulu that only he owns. So, he pauses.
“Know about what?” Frank is still looking at the TVs.
“Know about what’s happening back on Earth.”
“That stuff on the TVs? I don’t pay attention to that stuff. I’m not going back anyway. What do I care if they all kill each other?”
Lebbe puts the last bit of burger in his mouth and follows it with the last of the fries. “You should still care,” he says around a mouthful of food.
Frank stands. “Maybe. We’re about to shut everything down. You want anyth
ing else?”
Lebbe shakes his head. “Just put this on my tab.”
Frank dismisses him with a wave of his hand. “On the house.”
“Thanks,” Lebbe says. “Have a nice night.”
Frank is already walking away. He shoots a hand above his head and gives a quick wave.
+++++
Martin is sitting next to Grace, in the navigator’s seat of Zulu’s hauler. He has the heel of one boot propped up on the control panel. He’s watching as the rookie hauler pilot tries to guide the big ship into the wide opening in one of Zulu’s outer rings.
Her face is twisted up. Her eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Come on,” Martin says. “This ship ain’t that big, and that opening is huge. Just put a little confidence into that stick and land this thing.”
“Leave her alone,” McKibbon says from behind her. “First time doing this, and she’s towing another ship with it. It’s not like she’s flying some kind of fighter ship.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Of course. But seriously, let’s get this thing back home. The closer you get the wider open that hole will look, so trust your training and put this thing down.”
Grace nods and gives the hauler more power. Zulu grows quickly in the view until it’s all that any of them can see. The opening that Grace is aiming for grows quickly too, and Martin and McKibbon watch the tension drop from her shoulders.
She guides the hauler back under the bright glare of Zulu’s hold and back onto the solid ground of Zulu’s floor.
Grace smiles. Martin taps her on the shoulder. “Nice job, kid.”
Motors whine outside the ship; the doors are shutting. Martin and Grace excuse themselves to the back of the ship to gather their gear. McKibbon pulls his own equipment from the hold behind him and waits for the crew working on the other side of the hauler’s doors to give them the OK that they’re clear to exit.
Two quick raps come from the other side of the door, and McKibbon triggers the hold doors to open. Two soldiers are standing at attention on the other side.
“Relax guys. There’s a woman in the sick bay. Transfer her, carefully, to Zulu’s infirmary. Get her hooked back up to the med bots and get them treating her.”
The men hurry past him, and that’s when he sees Grey. She’s doing a poor job of hiding a smile.
“Welcome back, commander.” She holds a hand out for him to shake, and he does. “Care to debrief me on what happened out there?”
“Of course,” he says, “but can I get settled first?”
“Sure. Meet me in my office?”
“Ten minutes?”
“Sounds good.”
McKibbon goes back into the dark of the hauler to find Martin and Grace. They are both packing up armor to transport it back onto Zulu, Martin giving Grace tips on how to make it as compact as possible.
“I’ve got to go chat with Zulu’s chief about what we found,” McKibbon tells the pair. “She’s going to want to know more about the lady we brought on board and what we found out there.”
Martin stops what he’s doing and looks to McKibbon. “Uh huh,” he says, then he smiles.
McKibbon shakes him off then asks: “Can one of you file the paperwork to close out this flight?”
Grace volunteers. “I can, sir. I’ve never done it, and I’d like to.”
“Thank you, Grace. I’ll see you all in a bit.”
McKibbon heads back to the wide-open door and back out into the part of Zulu that’s his to control. He places his bag next to a small desk on his way out then heads to talk with Grey.
Her office is just off Zulu’s bridge before you go through the doors to the control room. He knocks twice and is invited in. He opens the door and she’s getting up from behind her desk. She waits for him to close the door before she actually approaches, but when she does she wraps arms around his neck and gives him a long kiss.
“Wow, and I was gone less than a day.”
“Gone long enough. Welcome back.”
She lifts herself up on her toes to kiss him again.
“Now,” she turns to head back to her seat behind her desk, “tell me what you found.”
“That’s it?” McKibbon smiles. “That’s all the homecoming I get?”
“You were gone less than a day, soldier.” She winks.
McKibbon laughs and sits across the desk from Grey. “What we found was a dead ship and a woman.”
“I was hoping for more detail than that.”
“I know. And I can give you some, but I don’t know how helpful it will be.”
Grey reaches into a drawer on her right and pulls out a large legal pad that is mostly empty. She reaches into a shallow drawer in front of her and pulls out a pen.
“How about you just tell me everything you know. I’ll take notes, and I’ll decide what’s important and not.”
“Your call. Let me know when you get bored. You probably saw a lot of this on our cams.”
“I did,” she sits with her pen prone, “but I want to hear it again.”
“Our approach was slow. Hesitant.”
“Cautious,” Grey corrects.
“It was a cautious approach. We could tell a good way out that there was a big gap in the side, a hole. But we didn’t know what made it just yet.”
“Smooth sides or jagged?”
“Yeah.” McKibbon was nodding. “That’s what we were looking for, but were still too far out to tell.
“But when you got close enough?”
“It was smooth.”
“So right away you knew it was pirates?”
“It’s not our place to make a determination on who did this. Our role is to go out and complete the mission set before us.” McKibbon straightened in his chair. This was feeling less like an update and more like an official debrief. “I do know that my people noted that they hadn't ever seen something like it before. Who ever advanced on this ship hadn't punched their way in, but instead…”
“I don't understand.” Grey interrupts, but McKibbon keeps talking.
“... instead it looked like the walls had been melted. They noticed what looked like two hardened pools of metal in a couple of places on the ship.”
“Melted their way in?”
“That's the report I'm getting.”
Grey leans back in her seat and looks to the ceiling, like she's considering this new information.
McKibbon gives her a minute then asks, “So, what are you thinking this is?”
She relaxes and sits up and says, “Oh, I have no idea. And if your people don't…”
“It's new, even for Martin.”
“I should probably ask Lebbe. See what he thinks.”
McKibbon nods.
“Now tell me about the woman.”
“Wish there were something to tell. She's been out of it the entire time. All I know are her vitals. And she's beaten up but fine.”
“You didn't get anything from her? Your crew, I mean.”
McKibbon shakes his head.
“So then we wait for her to wake up.”
McKibbon starts to say something but hesitates. He tries to begin again but stops.
“What?” Grey asks and leans forward, her elbows resting on the desk in front of her.
“It's Martin. He told me that something about her strikes him wrong. He's got a feeling…”
“A feeling of what?”
“That she's the enemy.”
“And what do you think?”
Mckibbon pauses before answering. “I don't know yet. I don't think he's right. I don't get the same sense that he does, so I'm inclined to say he's wrong. But he's also Martin; he's seen more than I ever will. So I don't want to just discount him.”
+++++
Lebbe steps off the elevator and rubs his eyes. The long day is catching up with him. He's realizing now just how many hours he spent exploring the guts if Zulu.
He stands in front of the door to his cabin and fights through a yawn b
efore placing his ID tattoo in front of the scanner next to the jamb.
The scanner beeps and the lock deactivates. He opens the door, and the overhead light flickers to life. He takes a few steps inside and drops on the couch then closes his eyes.
He sits up and feels around the couch for the remote that operates the screen on the wall across from him. He activates the screen and it slowly comes on. He hears the voices first, commentators arguing again. He listens for a moment and the picture slowly begins to appear. These older screens on the personnel cabins on Zulu are maddeningly slow to come on. Lebbe has mentioned it to Grey. She humored him by saying she’d put it on her list of upgrades then flipped through several pages of notes before actually writing anything down. Not a priority, Lebbe thought. Got it.
