Days Until Home

by Mark Gardner

  Hayes would have put in ninety years on the Kerwood just to see that happen. He’d give his own life up if that’s what it took. Right now. Dead. Just for a glimpse of it. But Colt was gone with the love of his life, stolen away by the one vehicle he couldn’t control.

  There had been world wars that were more humane than the battles Winchester had with Cheyenne, his wife, about her drinking. She had a penchant for getting liquored up and driving Colt around. He loved her, but she had a lot of demons, and the only peace she ever found was in the bottle.

  He looked past it. Tried everything he could to help, and forgave her when he found her in bed with one of her Jr. college students. Well, he eventually forgave her, which was all for Colt. That was the night he struck her and put the .357 to her head. But till death do us part were not just words to Winchester Hayes, and he forgave her …

  Everything for Colt.

  She had made him a cuckold, which put strain on their marriage. Then when she got in trouble at a local bar, she made him into a murderer, too. Keeping a secret that dark does things to your heart, and she became even more of a drunk for harboring the guilt of what he had done.

  But Cheyenne Hayes was his wife, and he forced himself to believe she was worth it. All of the embarrassment, the fights, and the money she burned, it was all worth it because she had given him Colt. But as fate would have it, her sphere of disaster would consume the innocent, too.

  Winchester still had nightmares about the carnage he saw when he was called to identify the bodies. He never thought, that with all the things the municipal traffic organization did to keep drivers safe, he would see a wreck like the one Cheyenne caused.

  She had taken his son away from him. That was the end of his life. He remembered standing in the funeral home, feeling numb, not knowing what to do with himself. Drinking reminded him too much of her weakness, and drugs meant that he would lose the Kerwood, too. The only thing he had left in life was this ship. A ship he became captain of in order to guarantee a future for Colt.

  Now the money meant nothing, but there was something about being away from civilization that brought him peace. So, as they pushed away from Egeria-13, he felt a pang of anxiety. He would be back among everyone, grounded and waiting for another job. He would have to deal with the nightmares and the memories of the sins he had committed for his love.

  The engine noise lost its luster, and he felt the invisible walls pushing in. The whispers began anew, and they sounded like Cheyenne, begging and pleading for him to forgive her. He thought of being under the thrusters when Booker hit the switch. It would remove all the memories and pain of his loss. He could be a ghost, out there in space, enjoying the quiet away from everyone.

  Fire and death would be a welcome respite, he thought and closed his eyes against the whispers, fighting back against her pleas to let her know he was done.

  He came back to the present and focused his eyes. It felt as if an entire hour had passed with him remembering his family. He looked over at Femke, expecting to see her calmly enjoying the ride, but he almost flinched when he saw those ice-blue eyes locked on him.

  She watched him brood, but he didn’t know how long, and his 1,000 yard stare into the painful pathways had made him impervious to everything.

  Femke seemed to struggle with the idea of saying something, but when he caught her looking, he shook his head and looked away quickly to Angelo Lu.

  “You alright, Skip?” Booker asked, and he noticed that he, too, looked his way. He didn’t like the way that everyone looked at him, and he worried he seemed mad to them. He tried to ignore the whispers as they grew louder to fight the engine. Marisol’s brown eyes stared at him with pity…

  “Turn around and get to your jobs,” he said with a growl.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Days Until Home: UNKNOWN

  She couldn’t help but hear it. A chorus of overlapping voices she didn’t recognize. The terse orchestra of unknown instruments playing notes that did not exist. The bark of a hellhound banished to the darkness of humanity’s worst nightmare. It was like infinite, simultaneous strikes of a hammer on a single anvil. Each strike was more thunderous than the last, compressed into a fraction of a second. The sound hit Adelaide’s chest and pushed her against her launch chair. The warm familiar embrace was something her brain could actually comprehend.

  Vomit sprayed the inside of her launch helmet. Tendrils formed mucousy bubbles as the lack of gravity pooled them into slimy globules of the breakfast she missed as she ran around the Kerwood just before launch from Egeria-13. She could only gape at the violence perpetrated on her, her shipmates, and the metal can she had called home for far too long.

  Adelaide reached to her chest to feel the copper mesh beneath her coveralls. She knew, as she had known so many times leading up to launch, that her pirate transponder was where it needed to be for her plans. They won’t be able to find me, her overtaxed brain decried. She tried to assess the situation, but her neurons fired faster than time could account for. Her heart paused, the cacophony of destruction lasted the finite gulf between beats. She reached to wipe the grotesquery from her vision, but her gloved hand struck the smooth Lexan dome of her borrowed launch helmet. She dared not act without thinking long and hard about what was happening. A wrong move so far from home would leave her floating in the black with only the rocks, and the smell of vomit, as her companions until she became another statistic in the treatise of space travel.

  This is going to be foul. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, pushed her face against her visor, and slowly rotated her head back and forth. The topography of her eyes, cheeks, and nose performed their job with diligence, collecting the spew from her only view of her new reality.

  Foul does little to describe it, she thought as greenish bile oozed to the sides of her face as she continued to shake her head. She blinked the stinging stench from her eyes and focused through the Lexan. The first thing she saw was an ashen face introverted, tongue hanging out as an unsuited miner, still strapped to her launch chair, floated by. The name tag on her dirty coveralls declared this unfortunate soul to be FREITAG. German for ‘free day.’ It amazed Adelaide that her addled brain would endow these useless tidbits upon her at such a time. A sudden shock ran up her spine as her eyes locked on a piece of shrapnel that protruded from Freitag’s chest, with a trail of crimson bubbles that floated away like a comet that just couldn’t be bothered to have a proper tail.

  Adelaide couldn’t believe her ears. Silence. It could’ve been due to shock, but she was certain the telltale hiss of the suit’s oxygenator was missing. Even without gravity, she knew her constant companion – a neighbor she trusted – the Kerwood’s thrusters were dead.

  So much for the plans of mice and men, she thought as she continued to survey the destruction a vengeful God had wrought. She looked around the passageway she had sat over in Auxiliary Propulsion only moments before, and she knew they were now more than forty-one days until home. Who knew how long the potato-shaped gray features of Egeria-13 would be their only neighbor?

  Days Until Home: 41

  Time until Launch: 00:01:45

  Jeremy’s Launch helmet rested on his lap, his elbow preventing it from tumbling to the deck. Even in the light gravity of Egeria-13, the fall from his lap to the deck grate could compromise the seal. Not that it mattered, he thought, the lift-off from this gray spud is so ordinary, so easy, the suits weren’t really needed. His fingers danced over the touchscreen in front of him. Auxiliary thruster fuel levels, computer-assisted trajectory plans, EXT engine status, and various readings about the Kerwood were what he needed to know. What he wanted to know, was where the hades is Crazy Ade? His eyes shifted to her empty launch chair and matching disused instrumentation panel.

  The 2MC chirped, and Jeremy typed in the sequence to inform the bridge that auxiliary propulsion was ‘GO’ for launch.

  “One minute till lift-off, Kerwood,” the 1MC announced. Jeremy smiled at the sultry voice o
f Marisol Vega. There were rumors about her, but Jeremy was too old and tired to care about the whisperings of the youngsters on the boat.

  Youngsters? he thought, shaking his head. When did I get so old? His eyes shifted again to his vacant MPA’s seat. Where is she? He drummed his fingers on his helmet. On a pebble like Egeria-13, many of his shipmates decided that suiting up was more trouble than it was worth. Not in engineering. Standard operating procedure is the only way we keep this boat afloat. He swiped the instrumentation readout to the side of his panel, stabbed an icon, and the schematic of the Kerwood popped up. Color-coded dots congregated in designated launch spaces. His own dot pulsed with concentric circles in the auxiliary propulsion space over the port station-keeping array.

  The safest place for the contract crew during launch was the launch passageway that ran just behind Aux, nestled between the launch thrusters housed below station-keeping, to the damage control space. The suppression field and the bulk of the Kerwood’s superstructure were integrated into that passageway. When the EXT was active, and the chemical thrusters were not needed, the launch chairs folded into the bulkhead, and there was a direct path from auxiliary propulsion to the damage control spaces.

  He glanced at the chronometer and tapped an icon on the Kerwood’s positioning schematic. Several pulsating dots were not fixed, and the one he cared about was moving toward Aux from an equipment trunk.

  The door to Aux retracted into its bulkhead, and Adelaide rushed to her launch chair, strapped herself in, and looked at him. Her face was partially obscured by tinted Lexan, but her scowl was evident in the gap of her suit and her unsealed launch helmet. Jeremy noticed her suit wasn’t the one she normally donned for lift-off.

  “Get your helmet on, ChEng,” she demanded and rotated the collar, sealing her suit and isolating herself from the Kerwood’s environment.

  “Prepare for lift-off!” barked the captain over the 1MC.

  Jeremy twisted his collar, and the bottom third of the instrument panel was obscured. The cheap things that they do here.

  “9…8…7,” Vega’s sweet voice intoned over the 1MC.

  It was only for a fleeting moment, but the chief engineer of the Kerwood thought he saw two pulsating dots on the schematic that represented his main propulsion assistant. The bridge crew called her Lady Marmalade, the engineers under her command called her Sir, he didn’t know what her various lovers called her, but he only knew her as Crazy Ade. Crazy enough to be in two places at once? He shook his head and looked toward Adelaide.

  He watched her ram the heel of her gloved hand into her touch panel, and it jerked up a few inches. She positioned her knee against the edge of the unbreakable glass until she felt gravity fade away and thrust push him into his seat.

  The 26MC, or machine control circuit, came to life in his ears. Engineering stations all over the ship called out readings so they could make any necessary adjustments. These, like the launch suits, were mostly unneeded as the computer controlled all aspects of their ascent. They ignored the uncomfortable pressure against their bodies, and their fingers stabbed enlarged icons below readouts. Everything is going as planned, he thought as he watched the telemetry from Egeria-13 scroll across his screen.

  A calamity arose from the 26MC. “… intermittent readings on …”

  He rotated his shoulders to see Adelaide slam her fist against her panel.

  “… redline on the …”

  The deck below Adelaide’s station seemed to undulate, overlapping plates revealing metal that hadn’t been seen by the crew of the Kerwood since the superstructure was laid in orbit of Luna Station.

  “… number four coupling…feed switched to …”

  The deck buckled and Adelaide’s chair seemed to fall away from her panel. Her chair tumbled end over end into the gaping maw of twisted metal. She disappeared into the space below. Without regard for his own safety, Jeremy reached for his restraint release lever but didn’t see the overhead detach from the forward wall and swing down and strike his shoulder and head, knocking him unconscious.

  “… emergency override of plant …”

  Plants? he thought as the edges of his vision faded to black, Adelaide got me that fichus on Luna-Eight.

  “… EXT idle … hull breach …”

  His musings were cut short by the dark embrace of oblivion.

  Days Until Home: 41

  Time Until Launch: 00:06:17

  “I love you.”

  Adelaide froze for only a second before she smiled at Erika and ran her fingers along the inside of her exposed thigh. Had she been thinking clearly, Erika would’ve noticed Adelaide’s hesitation. Erika squirmed at the touch on her thigh and felt a shudder race up her spine.

  Oh, yeah, Erika thought, allowing the sensation to overwhelm her. She knew this was only a fling with Adelaide, but the woman made love with an intensity that betrayed the great sadness behind her eyes. When that energy was aimed at pleasing her, Erika reveled in it. When it was directed at someone Adelaide thought unworthy…

  It’s best to not think about that, she thought as the shudder subsumed into a cold dread. Erika felt her heart drop when Erika rolled off the… What the hell is this, anyway? The stencil on the bulkhead clearly spelled out INSTRUMENTATION SPACE, and the crisscrossing grate tugged at her coveralls.

  “Get into your launch pajamas,” Adelaide demanded. It was the bark of a superior officer. Gone was the tender tongue of the woman she wished she could stay with forever. Erika sighed and lay there motionless on the deck of the instrumentation space.

  Adelaide stepped into a launch suit she grabbed from a locker embedded into the bulkhead and pulled it up to her shoulders. Erika just wanted to bask in the afterglow.

  The 1MC chimed, and Captain Hayes’ voice sounded out. “Kerwood, this is it, we’re about to shove off. I hope that you’re all strapped in, suited up, and ready to go. We will begin the countdown sequence in just under five minutes now, and I would really like for us all to have a safe trip.”

  Erika watched Adelaide curiously touch her chest and look down at Erika. “Get your slag together, Ängström, we’re leaving this rock, and you need to be in your seat in damage control.”

  Erika reached her hand out to Adelaide. “Adel—” she started.

  “I’m serious, Erika. Suit. Damage control. Chair.”

  Erika rolled her eyes. “On Egeria-13? It’s not worth the effort.”

  Adelaide leaned down and kissed Erika lightly on the lips. “That’s an order, Engineer.”

  Erika giggled and tried to slap Adelaide’s ass when she turned and quickly strode to the door. “I mean it,” Adelaide said as she looked inside her helmet. “Four minutes.”

  The door closed and sealed with a barely discernible hiss. Erika stared at the space Adelaide was just in. She couldn’t quite place the new feeling that had come over her. Ever since she returned from her EVA, it was as if Erika hadn’t a care in the world. Well, she mused with a giggle, a care in Kerwood. It was as if the careful Erika was just below the surface, shouting for her to heed her words, and this new uncaring Erika had taken control. She sighed, shrugged her shoulders, and began the process of putting on her launch suit. A waste of my time, she thought as she pressed the seam together and waited for the seal. These belt contracts are always so uneventful.

  Days Until Home: 41

  Time Until Launch: 00:13:06

  Come find me, you know I hate to wait.

  Adelaide scowled as she read the message from Erika. She shoved her pirate comms device into the pocket of her overalls. Stupid twat, Adelaide thought. What the hades is with her lately? She reached for the instrumentation panel embedded in the bulkhead and swiped the readings to the side. She pulled off her work gloves and tapped a few icons too small to be adequately manipulated with the gloves on. Damn it, I don’t have time for this!

  She traced the path to the Instrumentation Space where Erika’s transponder glowed from the aft storage tank she was in on the Kerwood’s sch
ematic and frowned at all the little dots scurrying about. They were merely an inconvenience, but still, each of those stupid little dots represented more time lost.

  “Hey, ChEng,” she said to Jeremy, “I gotta take care of something real quick. I’ll meet you in Aux before launch.”

  He looked up from the deck where he had gathered the tools used on the tank. He seemed startled as if he were lost in thought. “Anything I need to know about?”

  “No,” she replied, “this one’s…” She cocked her head to the side, “personal,” she finished.

  “Make it quick. Skipper’d’ve left this spud yesterday by the way he grumbled and carried on during the morning staff meeting.”

  “Glad I wasn’t there to violate his thinking spot.” Adelaide tapped her index finger on her temple three times and emphasized each one. “Think, think, think,” she declared with a crooked grin.

  Jeremy made an obscene gesture with his still gloved hand and waved Adelaide away. Adelaide sighed and stepped into the passageway. She turned toward the galley and, at the next intersection, she collided with another body.

  The miner staggered back and fell against his two companions. Slagging rats, Adelaide thought, barely containing her fury.

  “Watch it, Guy,” exclaimed one of the two bystanders that the miner—No, Adelaide thought, that’s Old Vicky—had fallen against.

  “Pinche idiota,” the other miner that Victor stumbled into declared with a pathetic attempt at malice.

  Malice, Adelaide thought, I could show these clowns what real malice is.

  Old Vicky mumbled an apology and locked eyes with her. His eyes widened only for a moment before she regained her composure.

  Adelaide smiled and spread her hands. “Sorry!” she said with exaggerated innocence. She layered on the saccharine and forced her smile wider. “Need to watch where I’m going.” She tilted her head and waved her hand down the passageway. “Too much to do, you know.”