Absolute Zero

by Phillip Tomasso

  Windsor cupped his forehead between the web of his thumb and finger. Three casualties. That was far too many. He didn’t imagine any of this sat well with the commander. “How did you make it to the colony, Lieutenant?”

  “We walked,” she said.

  “And what about the colonists?”

  “So far, we’ve not encountered anyone else,” she said.

  “No one?”

  There was a pause. “No one, sir. However, we have engaged with an aggressive alien lifeform. This being, almost reptilian, could quite possibly be responsible for the colonists sounding the alarms.”

  Windsor wasn’t sure what Rivers was saying. He tried imagining a lizard wreaking havoc on the planet. It concerned him because Rivers indicated the reptiles might be the cause of the alarms, but people oftentimes overreacted. It was human nature. What weighed heaviest on his mind was locating the colonists. They must be holed up somewhere on the compound. “How much of the compound have you explored?”

  “Nearly half. The commander is confident they are here. Over.”

  That was good news. It confirmed his suspicions that the colonists were hiding somewhere. He knew Euphoric gave up hope anyone was still alive on the planet, thinking too much time had passed. He wasn’t as quick at dismissing the colonists or their will to survive.

  Once the Eclipse team found them, they could set things straight and head home. The loss of life to members of the crew was tragic, and he wanted his commander and the others back on the ship as soon as possible. “Is the commander close?”

  “Standing right beside me. Over.”

  “Commander Meyers, this is First Officer Windsor. I have an updated priority memo from Euphoric. Is there a pad close by where I can transmit the information to you?”

  “We have access to the computers here. We’re accessing the database now, seeing if we can get it online,” Rivers said. “And . . . we are ready for the transmission.”

  “Okay. Standby,” he said. Windsor was not thrilled about passing along the new, altered directive. It was cold and heartless. If the Eclipse crew could sort things out, get the colonists back on their feet, and the mining operation up and running again, then everything would be set straight. He found the memorandum and sent it to the colony’s database. “Sent.”

  “The commander wants to know how everything is on the Eclipse. Over,” Rivers asked.

  “We’re fine. Planning for your return home. We can send the shuttle to retrieve you, and any of the colonists you may still encounter.” He wanted to convey optimism. Was it possible something horrible had happened to every single one of the colonists? That would be catastrophic. People back home would riot. Euphoric would wind up a defendant in a liability class-action lawsuit. It wouldn’t matter if release forms had been signed. The right to sue still existed. Bad press might more than cripple the corporation, it could bankrupt them.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” It was Commander Meyers.

  “The directive came from the home office.”

  “I can see that. Are they out of their minds? We’re here to check on the colonists, not collect up the diamonds and bring them back to Nebula,” she shouted.

  Windsor winced. “Understood, Commander. Loud and clear.”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, Windsor. We’re going to complete our search of the facility. A thorough search. If we find any of the colonists, we will bring them back to the Eclipse with us. If we don’t find anyone, then my team and I are returning to the ship. Without any diamonds. If Euphoric has a problem with that, they can take it up with me when I return. There are serious threats down here, and I will not put my crew in danger any longer than is necessary to complete our initial objective!”

  Windsor said, “I can ready the second shuttle. Say the word and I’ll fly down to retrieve all of you.”

  “You can ready the shuttle, Windsor. That would be great. We have the colonist’s shuttle here. It might be easier, safer, if we just exit the surface in that,” Meyers said. “But, as a contingency, should something go wrong, we’d definitely appreciate your assistance.”

  “Aye, Commander. I’ll be ready.”

  “We’ll be in touch, Windsor. Over and out.”

  Windsor signed off. He sat back in his chair, dropped the pad into his lap, and sighed. He suddenly felt wonderful. He’d gotten to a point where if contact hadn’t been made soon, he would have choices to consider and decisions to make.

  Thankfully, that was no longer the case. Windsor stood up and pulled on the ends of his uniform shirt, straightening out wrinkles.

  “Gaines,” he said. “Let Officer Kadera know I’m heading down to see her. We’ve got to ready the second shuttle for a possible rescue mission.”

  Gains did not try hiding his grin. “Aye. I’ll alert her immediately.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Aroldis D’Rukker tried blocking memories from his mind, oftentimes with little success. He felt like remembering some things did little good. They didn’t move him forward, and therefore, couldn’t be useful. If anything, memories were a deterrent, forcing him to lose focus. Unable to stay focused was a dangerous way to live your life in space. Too much depended on concentration. It wasn’t just his own life he was responsible for, either. He had his crew to think about. They were his family and depended on him.

  And yet, at times, it just happened, and he remembered.

  D’Rukker knew he promised the crew much more than he delivered, but they got by. The idea of adventure and action was, in fact, mostly time spent searching for replacement parts for ship repairs, and pulling off larcenies so they didn’t starve or run out of fuel. It was seemingly endless and fruitless expeditions that rarely lacked any significant payment. But it was what he’d made of his life and hoped if his father ever found out, he wouldn’t be too disappointed.

  He missed his father. For as long as he could remember, it had always been just the two of them.

  His mother jumped ship shortly after he’d been born. Although his father never talked bad about his mother, he one time found a letter his father had hidden inside a desk drawer. His mother claimed she was too young to be a mother, and a child wasn’t really what she wanted in life. There was too much left to do, so much out there still to explore. Aldoris’ mother said she wasn’t ready to give up on living her own life first. Having a family wasn’t at, or even near, the top of her priorities. That was what she had written.

  And then, apparently, she’d left.

  Aldoris wasn’t sure how a woman walked out on a family, just gave up, and quit. It’s what his mother had done, though. He knew it wasn’t the norm, and that when you got down to it, his mother had been a heartless, emotionless, and selfish woman. The exact polar opposite of his father.

  He wasn’t some textbook guy with mommy issues. Aldoris would fire a blaster bolt into the forehead of anyone who suggested such a preposterous, unsubstantiated psychological babble. If anything, and he’d admit, willingly, he was a son who always admired his father. It was more than just placing him on a pedestal he didn’t deserve. He didn’t worship the man, but definitely loved, admired, and missed him.

  Brandt D’Rukker had been a galactic marshal. He worked a sector on Nova, operated by a chunk of the more mid-sized corporations in charge of the Way Station. It was during a string of assaults and a subsequent murder when Galactic assigned more marshals as investigative resources.

  The only commonality linking the spurt of criminal activity together was one specific company that employed each of them. Aroldis remembered the long hours his father worked. Even when not at work, the case was all he talked about. He loved every minute. His father involved him. They would sit around the table, his notes between them, and they would talk through the points of the case. He always wanted Aroldis’ take, asked his opinion often. As a teenager, he felt like he was an unbadged marshal.

  Best part, at one point, they’d gotten close. The two of them didn’t have the thing solved, bu
t Aroldis’ father had definitely drawn some lines and connected some dots. There wasn’t a painted picture, but some broad strokes had been brushed, and Brandt was confident they were now closer to solving the crimes than they had been before. He’d been so excited, in fact, that he contacted his supervisor with the new connections he’d identified.

  It was then—maybe two days later—when a new cop, a kid fresh from the academy, came across an oddity in records when checking over the company’s books. The kid had been green, and this had been a major investigation. The kid had been, Brandt thought, assigned to basement work based on the rookie status. Pouring over documents and more or less mindless legwork that rarely had him leaving his seat seemed like an appropriate assignment for a newbie. The kid never complained. Aroldis remembered his father recalling the excitement the new marshal expressed over just becoming part of the investigative team. It was not something he’d forget, because he understood how that new marshal must have felt. It was probably exactly the same way he felt each time he worked into the middle of the night at the kitchen table with his father.

  This kid, it turned out, had uncovered a recent series of rather large monetary transfers into a private account. Closer inspection revealed the account had been set up a few weeks prior to the start of the corruption. Although there had been no name attached, the I.P. address and software tracking led the marshals directly to Brandt’s door.

  The following year became a blur, a nightmare. He’d never forget the day the Galactic sent an entire armed team to bust through their door. His father had been in the shower. He had been cooking dinner for the two of them. The marshals never attempted knocking.

  Aroldis sold their place and used the money to hire an expensive criminal defense attorney. There was no way some court-appointed hack was going to represent his father during the trial. He never told his father he’d sold the place, though. Brandt didn’t need to know that. He had enough on his mind. When first arrested, the judge denied the request for bail. (Which, at that hearing, Brandt had been represented by a court-appointed attorney). Hence, the sale.

  The charges Brandt faced spanned from theft and assault to murder.

  Someone was pinning the spree of crime on his father. It was clearly a set-up. Somehow, Brandt had become the fall-guy, the patsy. The trial was a joke. The prosecution produced less than even circumstantial evidence. And while the defense attorney did her best, nothing helped. Aroldis figured the conspiracy went too deep, went too high. There was no telling who was involved, but Aroldis suspected the galactic marshals as part of the cover-up.

  Brandt was sentenced to twenty-five years to life on Mars.

  There was no getting off Mars. Everyone knew that. It was as good as a death sentence.

  At first, Aroldis promised his father he’d find out the truth and clear his name, get him out, get him off that desolate planet … He meant it when he said it, but soon after his father was gone and on Mars, the realization of everything set in.

  Aroldis did not have the authority or ability to investigate the corporate crimes on his own. Just sixteen, he tried looking for work. It wasn’t as simple as walking into a place and asking for a job. People knew who he was, who his father was. Sympathy wasn’t in abundance for the D’Rukkers on Nova.

  Aroldis stayed with friends when he could and on the “streets” when he had nowhere else to go. The Nova Way Station didn’t tolerate or accommodate the homeless. If picked up for vagrancy, or loitering even, he’d find himself on an earthbound shuttle in no time. It often happened to those who couldn’t prove residency.

  Broke and hungry, Aroldis did what needed doing to survive.

  He stole his first ship.

  _____

  D’Rukker stretched, yawned, and gave the Cutlass controls a cursory glance. Erinne was the best co-pilot he could ever remember having. The kid had a way with the Cutlass that made her flying seem effortless. It wasn’t easy, or often, that D’Rukker felt comfortable with giving over control. That required trust. Trusting was not one of his strong points.

  Everything looked fine, and yet, something had interrupted his sleep. Not Erinne’s though. Because she hadn’t been sleeping. “What have we got?” he asked.

  She shushed him and spun a dial.

  “Officer Windsor. This Captain Rivers. How are you reading me?”

  “Hot damn,” Erinne said, slapped the dash, and fine-tuned the same dial next to her communicator. “Yeah, looks like someone from the mining colony is trying to reach out to the Eclipse.”

  D’Rukker sat forward. “Euphoric, eh? Looks like communications have been restored. They hailing from the planet surface?”

  “Seems that way.” Erinne sat back in her seat, hands on the arm rests. “How long are we going to just sit here?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “You’ve been sleeping.”

  D’Rukker shot Erinne a grim look. She might be the only person who could get away with talking to him that way. No. She was the only person he knew who could get away with talking to him that way. “I do some of my best thinking that way.”

  “And snoring.”

  “I don’t snore.”

  “Then your nose is broken,” she said and laughed.

  D’Rukker crossed his arms.

  “Sorry. As you were saying?”

  “My best guess, that colony down there got overwhelmed by storms. Too much to handle all at once. Must have been more than they were expecting.”

  Erinne said, “Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

  “Exactly,” D’Rukker said. “So they had set up this fancy compound with minimal research beforehand, because when you think about it, they don’t care about the people.”

  “It’s the diamonds they want.”

  D’Rukker nodded. “Exactly. Planet that size, filled with jewels, Nebula’s only got money on the mind. Not safety.”

  “Okay. But we kinda figured all of that.”

  “We did. But see, we know it’s true now. So, this distress signal gets sent out from the planet, right? And Nebula sends the Eclipse to investigate the situation.”

  “Which they are doing,” she added.

  D’Rukker said, “Which they are doing, but minimally. They sent down one shuttle, with four starfighters. Radio contact has been down for …”

  “Over seventeen hours.”

  “Over seventeen hours and the Eclipse hasn’t done anything but follow around in orbit,” D’Rukker said.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Tells me they have a bare bones staff left, a skeleton crew. They don’t have enough resources to send down another party to check on the status of the first party. We know they got walloped when they broke the atmosphere. And what? And nothing. No one came for them, not even after hours of communicator salience,” D’Rukker explained. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  Erinne kept nodding her head, but said, “Ah, no. I have absolutely no idea where you’re going with this.”

  D’Rukker pursed his lips and puffed out his cheeks. “Way I see it, we’ve got two choices.”

  “I’m listening.” Erinne propped her left elbow on the arm of her chair, made a metallic fist, and dropped her chin onto robotic knuckles.

  “We swoop in now, no way of telling what we’re up against. Euphoric’s people will be armed. I’m sure everyone on the Eclipse has a brand new blaster and whatever newest weaponry is out there nowadays. It’s not that I’m afraid of a fight,” he said, actually without much enthusiasm. Had been a long time since he’d last been in a fight. In a way, he kind of craved some confrontation. Floating around in space was the epitome of boredom. “But I just can’t qualify putting my crew in danger when I don’t have to.”

  “Qualify?”

  She enjoyed giving him a hard time. He kept reminding himself he loved her like a daughter. If he didn’t, he might end up killing her. “We should wait.”

  “Wait?”

&nb
sp; “Let the Eclipse complete their assessment. We keep monitoring the communicators, figure out what they know, see what’s going on—what went on, and when they’re gone, then we’ll head in.”

  “We know what went on. Bad weather. Plant’s one big storm globe.”

  “We think we know what happened. We don’t know anything. Not yet.”

  “So we wait?”

  “We wait, and when the Eclipse is long gone, all we will have to deal with is some miners and scientists.” D’Rukker grinned. “Can’t get any easier than that.”

  “… we have engaged with an aggressive alien lifeform. This being, almost reptilian, could quite possibly be responsible for the colonists sounding the alarms.”

  “Wait. Did you hear that?” D’Rukker said. The look on Erinne’s face made it clear she’d heard the transmission also, and yet he struggled with comprehension. “What did they just say?”

  “Now what?” she asked.

  He sat silent for a moment. A game changer. It shouldn’t be, and yet it was. The thoughts of his father are what filled his head. Everything his dad had ever taught him was in direct conflict with the way D’Rukker lived his life. Aroldis drew lines, though. He made things as black and white as he could. Eliminated as much of the grey as was possible. He stole things. Generally, he robbed those who could afford to lose some. While he didn’t give loot to the poor, he still felt he identified with the classic literature character. He couldn’t remember the name. Some guy living in a forest. Had a band of merry men. That guy stole from the rich, gave to the poor. Thing was, he was poor. So, in a way … But this. People were in danger. They were close enough to help. They had the means to help. The question was simple. Did they have an obligation to help?

  If he played the game, what would my father do in this situation, there really wouldn’t be much of a game. He knew the answer.