by Sam Renner
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Lebbe takes a seat at the counter at the Quickstop. He puts his reader on the counter in front of him and waves to Carole.
“Just a minute, Jim,” she says.
He waves a hand to tell her to take her time. He glances at the screens above the counter but then turns away and watches the crowd.
It’s mostly young, almost all boys. At least they look like boys to Lebbe. Their faces are free from wrinkles, and their minds are free from all the things you think about as you get older. All the doubts you have about opportunities. All they see is big money in those mines. That's where they're all going, of course. Each of them hoping to catch on with some captain who needs someone more eager than smart to go try to pull some ore out of some far flung rock.
Sure, some who look worried. Those are the old souls, the ones who are wise beyond their years. They recognize the opportunity but they also see all the risk that comes with shipping yourself out this far, going out past the edge of the galaxy to try and make enough money to set yourself up for a better life back home. From what Lebbe has seen of Earth from the footage he’s been watching, there's not much life left there to go back to. Not one he would want, anyway, if he didn't have a family there already. He starts thinking about his daughter again and tries to snap himself out of it.
He can't let his mind go back there to thinking about her and where she is and how she's feeling and if she's hurt or if she's dead. That's not productive right now. In those moments when he’s trying to rest, his mind will go there on its own; he doesn't need to take it there himself.
Carole comes to Lebbe at the counter and asks if she can get him something?
“Coffee will be great.”
“Just coffee?”
“Today, yeah.”
Carole nods and pulls a mug and saucer out from under the counter. She slides it in front of Lebbe, and he watches the steam pour out of the mug as she fills it.
He pulls the sugar and cream sitting down the counter closer to him and adds some of both to his cup. The speaker crackles overhead and announces the arrival of another ship, and Lebbe instinctively reaches for his pocket and the handwritten schedule that usually lives there. Today, his pocket’s empty.
Carole passes by again, and Lebbe stops her.
“When you get a chance, can you change these?” He points to the screens.
“You want something else? Other news?”
“Anything but, actually.”
“Let me take care of these other customers, and I’ll see what’s on the other feeds.”
Lebbe takes a cautious sip of his still steaming coffee. “Thanks.”
“Oh, and did Grey find you? She was looking for you last night.”
“She did.”
Lebbe turns from the counter and looks at the people eating at the Quickstop’s tables. A few older travelers have taken seats away from the younger ones. These aren’t the people looking to get to the mines on the cheap. These are the people flying them there. There are two captains from those companies that make their team members where uniforms. One of them is sitting behind a plate of eggs and toast reading something on a datapad. His uniform is a deep blue. The pants are ironed to a crisp crease. The circular patch on his shoulder looks new. It’s a white circle with three blue stars stacked vertically down the middle. He flies for Blue Star Mining, biggest company doing interstellar work. They are mostly quiet guys, at least those who have to wear uniforms. They come in and keep to themselves. Lebbe likes that.
From what he hears, though, it’s not an outfit that pays well. But, it’s a trade off. Lebbe is likely to see those kids who get hooked up with Blue Star pass back through Zulu on their way home. With the other companies, it’s more likely a one-way trip.
The other pilot wears a patch that Lebbe doesn’t recognize. He’s running his fingers through a thick, unkempt beard that’s glistening from the grease off his hamburger. He hasn’t stopped staring at the screens since Lebbe sat down. This kind of captain is more common than the put-together flyers who work with Blue Star. Some freelance guy who lives on his ship. It’s his every possession. His interaction with anyone other than his crew is minimal at best. Spend enough time with anyone and your bad habits and eccentricities stop being weird and become normal. Then you come back out in public ...
Uniforms don’t make the man.
Lebbe takes another sip from his coffee when Grey walks up.
“She’s awake.”
Lebbe sets the mug back onto the saucer.
“How long?”
“I just got a notification.”
Lebbe picks up the mug again and takes another drink. “So, this is a technicality.”
“I’m not following.”
“You asked for a notification when she’s up. The machine sees that she’s shown all the signs of being awake, but that doesn’t mean she’s in any kind of condition to talk.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Grey climbs up onto the booth next to Lebbe then continues. “If we have pirates out there that can turn metal into puddles then I want to know it.”
Grey catches Carole’s attention and asks for coffee.
“I understand that,” Lebbe says, “but if you pounce on her too quickly, it’s going to seem suspicious.”
“To you maybe, but you’re wired for suspicion.”
“Fair enough. But if you go in and start treating her like someone who’s done something wrong she’s going to clam up on you. Trust me. I’ve seen it before.”
Grey puts a shot of cream into her coffee and stirs. “But we need to figure out what’s happening out there beyond these walls. I saw the screens last night. I saw the trouble you’ve been telling me about. What if this is a part of that? What if it’s already come out this far.”
She stops and takes a sip of her coffee.
“What’s her name?” Lebbe asks.
“The pilot? I don’t know.”
“How about you worry about that first. Ask about her. Don’t ask about what happened right away. Make her feel comfortable. Make her feel welcomed. Then, when the time is right, ask her about what happened on her ship. I’ll be there to listen if you want me to and try to pick up on anything that seems off.”
“I’d appreciate that. But can we just go say hi for now?”
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This is a part of Zulu that Lebbe’s never seen either. He looks at the walls and looks at the doors and looks at the entire medical bay and thinks Home.
Grey points to the room at the end of the hall, and Lebbe sees a light spilling out from under the door. The pair walk up and give the door a gentle knock. They wait for an invitation to enter, but there is no answer. They knock again but still no answer. Gray checks the door knob, and it’s unlocked. She gently pushes the door open and pokes her head in. Lebbe hears her say hello, and a very faint hello comes back.
Grey opens the door and Lebbe sees in the bed a small woman with short hair Bruises are across her face. Her eyes look blackened and swollen. Her lip is cut.
Grey speaks: "Hi. My name is Caroline Grey. Welcome to Zulu. May I ask your name?”
The woman thinks for a moment then looks to Lebbe and Grey like they can help her answer this question.
“Honestly,” she says. “I don't know my name.”
Grey: “Pardon me?”
Caroline wants to continue but Lebbe interrupts her before she can say anymore. “That's understandable,” he says. “You've been through bit of a trauma. Do you remember anything about what happened?”
The woman pauses to think again and Grey looks to Lebbe with a look of “I thought we weren’t asking that.” Conversation is a struggle so far.
“Some, I think,” she says. “I remember my ship. I remember somebody boarding my ship. I remember them being unwelcome. But …”
The room sits silent for long moments. Lebbe and Grey waiting for the rest of the story. The woman content with an unfinished thought being its end.
�
��You need to rest,” Lebbe Says. “It'll come back to you.”
“Yes,” Grey says. “Rest.”
Grey turns and heads for the door, but Lebbe steps past her and into the room. He takes a seat in the chair across from a woman's bed.
“How about we keep you company and chat a bit? We can tell you what we know, and maybe that will jog your memory some.”
The woman wrinkles her nose and says that would be fine. Grey joins Lebbe in the other seat across from the bed.
“Do you happen to remember what had brought you out this far?” Lebbe asks.
“Work, “ the woman says. It's always work.
“What kind of work?”
“Whatever we could find. We weren't overly...c
“We?” Gray interrupts.
“Me and my crew. There were 2 of them, I think. Both men.”
Grey leans over to Lebbe and whispers "that squares with what we know.”
“You don't happen to remember their names do you?” asks Lebbe.
The woman tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear and says, “No. I wish I did. I know one of them was big, like mountain big. I don't remember the other one very well.”
Grey jumps in. "When we found you, you were wearing an armored suit, and you we're pretty beaten up. Unconscious. A couple of our team brought you on board our own hauler, brought you and your ship back here. You don't remember any of what happened before that?”
The woman shakes her head and begins to speak, "I know that we were boarded.” She looks to the ceiling, like something there will spur a memory. “I know that there was fighting. I vaguely remember asking for help. But then it's all black after that. I wish I knew more. I wish I could rebuild the scene for you. But I just can’t.”
The woman closes her eyes and puts her palms to her face. She yawns a big room-swallowing yawn. Lebbe stands.
“We’ll give you some time,” he says. “I know you just woke up, but your body is still recovering. It needs to rest. You've given us enough to go on for now. We just want to see if we can help you figure out what happened to you and your ship.
“I appreciate that, because I wanna know too. I'll let you know if anything comes back to me.”
Lebbe in Grey leave the room and the door closes behind them. They get a few steps down the hall when Grey stops Lebbe.
“What do you think?”
“I don't know enough to think any different than I did before. I need to see her ship.”
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The woman waits. She listens as the footsteps retreat down the hall. She listens to the conversation that’s too muffled to understand. Then she listens to the feet as they continue down the hall and through the doors out of the medical bay. Then she listens to the silence. She waits for something. For someone. But she’s alone, she’s sure of it.
Her room is bright and almost void of any kind of decoration. Should have half expected that.
“Lights. Down.” She says, hoping that the fixtures in the ceiling will respond. They don’t.
There are the two chairs that the people from Zulu sat in at the foot of her bed. A med bot sits idle in a corner behind her. There’s a table in the opposite corner. A small lamp sits on top, but it’s not on. On the wall across from her is a panel, all buttons and screens that make no sense to the woman, but they don’t have to. It’s a medical unit, and because Zulu isn’t a new station, it’s a little dated. It’s the kind of panel the woman was hoping to find, counting on Zulu’s medical bay to not have been upgraded.
She runs her fingers along the bottom edge of the panel until she finds an indentation. She pushes lightly and a data pad pops from its hold. Back when Zulu was built, an actual physician would have used this pad to help care for real patients. Now that patient care is left to the med bots, the pad sits in the housing, charging and waiting to be freed.
The woman pulls it out and powers it up.
The pad chimes and a voice says “Hello, doctor.”
The woman ignores the greeting. She pulls up a menu from the bottom corner of the screen and taps her way into the machine’s settings. A few more taps of the screen and she’s navigated her way to the operating systems and disconnects the pad from the Zulu’s internal network. She connects to the station’s main feed out then finds her way to the pad’s external messaging application. She types out a message and hits send.
“Success. I’m on Zulu.”
END
Read the next story from the Zulu Universe
POWER DOWN
Zulu Universe: Book 2
Space stations don’t die. They are designed to run until they’re told not to. So what’s happening to Transfer Station: Zulu?
Caroline Grey is ready for life on her space station to return to normal. Finding a rogue ship floating outside of Zulu was exciting for a moment, but there was still an itinerary to manage and jobs to be done.
For Jim Lebbe, the rogue ship and its mystery pilot are just a distraction from things happening back on Earth.
So, when life-support systems on Zulu start failing, neither has the time or attention needed to troubleshoot what is surely just a technical problem. But if these are just technical problems, why do systems continue to fail? Why are they cascading? Why is Zulu dying one system at a time?
It's going to take Grey and Lebbe working together to save their station if Zulu isn't already too far gone.
Download POWER DOWN Now
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