Waking Prometheus

Backstory

2012-06-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

With the "First Contact"/"Rebirth" series behind me, in 2001 I tried something a little less of a galaxy-spanning space opera and more intimate. More "Blade Runner" instead of "Star Wars." The result is a novella entitled "Waking Prometheus," which I think is the best title in my inventory.

The story follows Brent Gallowes, who loses his wife and child to a random murder sometime early in the next century. To escape his grief he becomes an intrastellar freighter captain, sort of like a truck driver of the stars. Through his work and a steady diet of booze he manages to keep the pain of losing his family at bay.

Then Brent and his crew discover a mysterious artifact while on a delivery. An artifact with the potential to revolutionize humanity--that's where the title comes from. But once Brent discovers the secret of the artifact he has to protect it from those who would steal it and use it for evil purposes. And in doing so recovers some of the humanity he lost when his family was taken from him.

Please enjoy "Waking Prometheus..."

Epilogue

2007-06-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

Epilogue

They say that old habits never die. For me, once I was separated from Eve and Sirvenski it was easy enough to fall right back into my old habits of drinking and popping pills. I took the transit pod from Montreal back to Chicago, the next nine months a haze of reckless bingeing. I had no home, no friends, and no possessions, but I did have a wallet brimming full of unibucks, more than enough to keep me stocked in booze and drugs during the tough Chicago winter.

Most nights I woke up screaming in an alley, vivid nightmares tearing at the worn fabric of my mind. In my dreams the dead would rise to torment me, my wife’s maggot-ridden corpse embracing me while Gill plunged a knife into me over and over, Turgeon’s scalped, handless corpse mocking me from the side while she played with my decomposing son. No matter how much I fought back, no matter how much I screamed, I could not fend off the ghosts. After six months I stopped sleeping almost entirely, settling for short naps when the amphetamines wore off.

My life had become a living death, an endless hell of torment, without a single refuge. I wandered the streets alone, the drugs and alcohol dulling my brain, but not insulating me from the pain. I thought of Eve a few times, but even the memory of our love was no comfort, it only reminded me of the guilty burden I bore, the burden of knowing that my life had kept the truth from coming out. So I continued to walk the streets alone, a willing outcast of society.

It was after a year that I finally left Chicago. Somehow I was lucid enough to board a transit pod and find my way to the house Becky and I had bought over fifteen years ago in Oak Park. It was pitch black outside, but I knew the route well enough that I could walk from the transit pod station to my old house by the dim light of streetlamps. For a moment I just stared at the house, a smile spreading across my face with the warm feeling in my stomach of being home again. Home, to the house where I had experienced the happiest moments in my life, where I had seen my son walk for the first time and heard him say “Daddy” for the first time, home to the house my wife and I had filled with love.

I walked up the steps and punched the button to open the door but nothing happened. I fumbled through my pockets, but I couldn’t find a key, so I picked up a rock from the lawn and smashed open a window. I ignored the alarms going off, crawling through the window and stumbling towards the stairs. I threw up on the first step, then, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I went up the stairs to the bedroom.

I staggered through the bedroom door to the bed, oblivious to the shouting of the young couple inhabiting it. The man pulled out a stun pistol, waving it at me menacingly, but I took out my pistol and aimed it at the man. “What are you doing here? This is my house!” I shouted drunkenly.

“What are you talking about?” The woman clinging against the man demanded. “We bought this house four years ago.”

“This is my house!” I roared again, this time firing a warning shot past the couple and into the wall. “Get out!”

For a moment the man seemed to want to challenge me, but a look at my pistol changed his mind. He hurried his wife out of the room, I heard them grabbing children in the next room, but I didn’t care. I lay on the left side of the bed, just as I had all the time Becky and I were married, and looked over to the right, but there was no one there. Tears came to my face as I carefully rearranged the pillows and blankets, mumbling, “Becky, what have they done?”

I threw my arms around Becky’s pillows, yearning for just some hint of her that I could hold onto to get through the pain. There was nothing, just the unfamiliar perfume of a stranger. “What have they done?” I screamed, throwing the pillow against the wall. I rose up, hurling blankets, sheets, and pillows to and fro until I even shoved the mattresses away, my dazed brain searching for Becky like a bloodhound tracking a scent.

“Turn around and drop the weapon!” A familiar voice shouted behind me. It was a voice I had not heard in five years, since the days after my family’s death. I turned around and for a moment thought I had lost my mind.

The years had not been kind at all to Officer Vanessa Housley, now Sergeant Housley from the stripes on her jacket. She was at least a hundred pounds heavier, her face had the lines of someone twice her age, and her auburn hair was cut short in an unattractive bob. Yet, behind the pudgy red cheeks I could still recognize her hazel eyes, the eyes that had shown concern for me all those years ago, which now showed only the bitterness of confronting the underbelly of society each and every day. Looking at me with my unruly beard and tattered clothes, Housley was probably thinking just how rough the last five years had been for me. “Mr. Gallowes?” Housley asked in shock.

“Stay away from me!” I shouted, aiming my pistol at her.

“Mr. Gallowes, please, let’s not do this. We can get you some help, just put the gun down and come with me,” the softness in her voice echoed back to the rookie officer trying to comfort a grieve-stricken husband five years ago.

“Help? Help? No one can help me!” I shouted, my voice rising an octave. “Don’t you see, I am cursed! I am cursed to live!” I put my gun to my head, feeling the coolness of the barrel against my temple.

“Please, there has to be somebody we can call,” Housley pleaded, but I was hardly listening to her. My eyes swept the room, a room where I had once shared with the love of my life, but now was strange to me. There was nothing left in here of our life together, only the objects and scents of strangers.

Before she could react, I lowered my pistol and shoved Housley to the floor. She shouted after me, but I was already streaking down the stairs, disappearing into the night like a phantom. I always wanted to apologize to Housley for what I had done that night, but Sergeant Vanessa Housley was killed three weeks later responding to a domestic dispute, just another death to haunt my nightmares, nightmares that would not plague me much longer.

I knew now where I had to go, the only place that would always hold a piece of Becky’s presence. It was the only place where I could go and still feel our love, where I could die embracing the memories of our life together. So I walked back to the transit pod station and started the journey back home.

The waves pounded loudly in my ears, the scent of salt hanging in the air as the sky started to turn to a predawn gray. After one year of traveling the world I had come full circle, back to Kingfisher Bluffs, my home. It was here that the circle would end, once and for all, for I had returned to this happy place to die.

I stood numbly at the edge of the bluffs, my bloodshot eyes staring out at the beauty of the ocean one last time. I rubbed unthinkingly at the freshly-cut stubble on my chin, my mind taking in the majestic spectacle of nature and feeling only slightly more at peace. Over the sound of the ocean and the seagulls I could hear voices calling to me, calling me home.

“I’m coming,” I croaked, wiping a tear from my left eye. After six years of pain and loneliness I would finally be with those I loved, those who had been taken from me, those whom I could never avenge. I spread my arms wide, closing my eyes and feeling the cool breeze brush against my skin. At last I could finally find peace from the torment that had been plaguing me. It was time for the final reckoning, when my soul could be free of its burden.

Eve and Sirvenski had bought my life by hiding the truth, from denying justice to Turgeon and Gill, but that would all change. A suicide note was tucked into my pocket, it explained everything that happened, how Halle Bradford had paid Pettyjohn to infiltrate the Yellowknife crew by impersonating Turgeon, how Pettyjohn and Palmer had then killed Gill when he uncovered their secret, and how Palmer had then suckered the Yellowknife crew into an alliance only to turn on them. There was no mention of Eve and Sirvenski, they were blameless in this, but the truth would finally be known, things would finally be made right. Taking one last breath of sweet air, I eased closer to the edge to make that final leap.

“Brent, no!” Eve screamed from behind me. I nearly lost my balance and fell right then, but I caught myself and whirled around to face her, pulling my pistol from my belt.

“Stay back!” I shouted.

“All right,” Eve replied, holding her arms out so that I could see she was unarmed, she took a step back from me. “Brent, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to make things right.”

“By killing yourself?”

“I wasn’t supposed to live in the first place! If I hadn’t lived then you and James could have exposed Bradford, you could have told the families of the victims the truth.”

“Brent, please, what is this going to solve? It can’t bring anyone back.”

“You don’t understand!” I screamed. “I failed Becky, Steve, Gill, Turgeon, and you! I couldn’t save Becky and Steve, I never even find their killer! I couldn’t stop Pettyjohn or Palmer to give Gill and Turgeon justice! I couldn’t even save your ship, so now you’re doomed to grow old and die just like everyone else! I failed so many times, and yet each time I managed to survive, I managed to go on enjoying the fruits of life, but no more. I’m not going to fail anyone else ever again!”

Before I could stop her, Eve rushed forward, wrapping her arms around me. I tried to push her away, but she maintained her hold on me, it was as though her arms were made of steel, no matter how hard I tried to push, she stayed with me. She looked up at me with tear-stained eyes, whispering, “If you jump, then we do it together. I’ve spent two million years tormented by loneliness, heartache, and guilt, but that all changed when I found you. When I met you I found love, I felt a joy I had never felt before in my life. I can’t bear to lose you now, so if you jump, then I’ll follow you so at least we can be together in the afterlife.”

“No!” I shouted, finally managing to push her away from me. Eve landed awkwardly on the ground, her body wracked with sobs as she reached towards me. “You can’t do it, I can’t be responsible for your death too!”

“You don’t have any choice!” She screamed back. “I love you, I won’t go on living if I can’t have you with me!”

“Why are you doing this?” I sobbed. “Don’t you understand? This is the only way to make things right.”

“I do understand, all too well. There were so many times when I wanted to end my life, when I wanted to end the pain once and for all, but I couldn’t do it, and now I know why. I couldn’t do it because you and I were meant to find each other.” Eve stood, brushing tear-soaked strands of hair from her face. “There is so much that the two of us can do, so much that we can give to this world, but it will be at a great cost. For me, the loss of immortality, for you the burden of living with the pain and guilt you’ve amassed over these last years. Yet, even as difficult as that is, we’ll have each other to ease the punishment. We will have our love to keep us strong through all of the hard times.”

I stared at her for a long time, thinking about what she had said. Finally, I collapsed to my knees, crying uncontrollably. I felt Eve’s hands wrap around my back, pulling me close to her. “I love you,” I bit out between sobs, feeling her tears against my neck.

“Then stay with me.”

“I…I don’t know if I can, but…” I stopped looking up at her. “But I want to try.”

Eve smiled at me and I smiled back. We walked down the bluffs to the old bench where years ago I had proposed to Becky. There was silence for hours as we sat on the bench, our bodies pressed close, our world consisting solely of the bluffs, the ocean, and each other. I thought of all that had happened in the last six years, all of the failures, all of the shame, all of the guilt. I had spent five years trying to run from those feelings, but in the end they just came back to haunt me. I tried to fight back, to take an eye for an eye, but that hadn’t worked either. Finally, I had to accept the simple truth, that there would be no true justice for my family, Turgeon, or Gill. I was cursed to be a decent man, my sense of morality a cage that kept my darker instincts from being released. I would have killed Pettyjohn to save Sirvenski, I would have killed Palmer to protect Eve, but I could not kill in cold blood, even to avenge a death. As much as I had tried to escape or change who I was, in the end I would simply have to accept it and try to live with it, for the sake of those who loved me. The first rays of sunlight were coming over the water, bringing not just another new day, but a new life for two people.

[END]

Chapter Ten

2007-06-12T13:33:00.002-07:00

Chapter Ten

My eyes slowly floated open, reflexively closing again from the harshness of the light, then slowly squinting so that I could look around the room. It was a simple white room with strange equipment scattered everywhere, tubes leading from points of my body to a host of monitors. It was obvious that I was in a hospital, my last memories coming back to me with a rush of guilt. Eve had abandoned her ship to save me, she had given up immortality for me. The lights suddenly dimmed, a door hissing open. I painfully turned my neck to see Eve stride briskly into the room, a comcard in hand.

I could see a subtle change in her body. Her hair was a few inches shorter, her face a little smoother, her skin just a little rosier, it was almost as though she had gotten younger since I had last seen her. “I heard you were awake,” she said, taking my hand.

My mouth was dry as cotton, making it difficult to speak, but I rasped, “This is the third time in as many days that I thought I was dead.”

Eve brushed the side of my head with one hand, her smile fading just a bit with concern. “Actually, you’ve been in a coma for five months.”

“What? Where am I then?”

“Don’t worry, you’re safe.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“You’re on Earth,” Eve stopped, touching a button on her comcard, the sound of pounding waves suddenly flooded the room. “Back home in Waterford, Maine to be exact.”

“Why?”

Before Eve could answer the door opened, a man in a white labcoat entering the room. I almost didn’t recognize him with sandy hair and a goatee, but when I looked past that I could tell that the man was James Sirvenski. “Welcome home, Brent.”

“James, what the hell is going on?” I demanded, trying to push myself up to sit, but I didn’t have the strength. Eve touched something on her comcard, the bed tilting up so that I was more or less in a sitting position.

“We wanted somewhere secluded to keep you while you recovered, just in case anyone tried anything, so this seemed a logical place.”

“So what hospital is this?” I looked around but there were no windows to see out of.

“We converted one of the caves in the side of the bluffs, that way it will be hard for anyone to break in,” Sirvenski replied.

“How did you pay for all this?” I swept my hands around the room to indicate all of the machines as well as the building itself. There was no way that Sirvenski had that kind of money, Fischer’s expense account wouldn’t have covered such extravagances, and Eve was an alien…”Oh no.”

Sirvenski and Eve looked at each other, Sirvenski nodding and saying, “I’ll leave you two alone.” The door hissed shut behind him, Eve taking a seat next to my bed, looking into my eyes. We looked silently at each other for a long time, and I knew that whatever Eve was about to say I wasn’t going to like it.

“What’s going on?” I finally asked.

Eve sighed then began, “After you blacked out, I managed to find the research station’s doctor and we took you for treatment. Unfortunately there wasn’t much they could do for you. The internal injuries were just too severe, your left lung and kidney were shut down, your liver and heart were close to failing, your left arm was pulp below the elbow, and your spine was all but severed at the base of the neck.” Eve stopped, I could see the pain it caused her to think of the rough shape I had been in. “Even on Earth it would have been difficult for you to make a full recovery, but with the research station’s limited facilities it was impossible. All they could do was to keep you alive on life support, but even that could not last forever. I knew that I could save you, but I would need to recreate some of my planet’s medical technology from scratch and adapt it to your body. I had no money, no resources to speak of, nowhere to turn to, I could only watch you hover between life and death and do nothing about it.”

Tears came to Eve’s eyes, making me wish for the strength to comfort her, but I was still too weak to do anything but squeeze her hand. “When James found me, we decided on a plan to get what we needed to save your life. He used the station’s computers to finally track down the trillionaire behind the research station’s funding. We sent a message to her, threatening to implicate her in the murder of the Yellowknife crew and to reveal her connections to Lindsey Pettyjohn if she did not provide us with money and the components we asked for. It took over a month, but we finally convinced her by bluffing that the ‘artifact’ was really an alien weapon and that we had discovered how to use it. Two weeks later, we received what we asked for and began working on the means to bring you back. In return, nothing of what actually happened aboard the Poseyville and Yellowknife would be reported. Both ships were listed as lost with all hands after a fatal collision. James and I created a story that generally fit the facts, and with a few well-placed bribes, no one would investigate too deeply. We packed my ship in a crate, stuffing it in a lifeboat and sending it on a one-way trip to Jupiter on the way back to Earth.”

“It took James and I another two weeks, but we managed to redesign Sohebian medical equipment for human physiology. We kept the project secret, making sure that no one found out anything specific about the equipment we were using. It took another month to get you stabilized enough that we could transport you back to Earth, where we set up this facility so you could finish your recovery.”

I numbly took in what Eve said, scarcely believing it. They had allowed this mysterious trillionaire to get off the hook, to get away with murder, all because of me. Justice for those who had been killed had been traded for my life. How could I live with the guilt, the knowledge that the families of the slain would never truly know what happened because my life was deemed too valuable? “How…how could you be so selfish?” I demanded as loudly as I could. I pulled my hand away from Eve’s, hoping that my eyes could convey all of the rage I felt.

“I didn’t…I wasn’t…” She began to stammer, then ran crying from the room. Sirvenski came in a second later, looking at me with concern.

“What happened?” He asked.

“Get out!” I roared. Sirvenski hesitated a moment then backed out of the room, leaving me alone, tears I was too weak to brush away coursing down my face.

Over the next two months of physical therapy I had plenty of time to think, mostly about how to get the justice that had been denied. Eve, Sirvenski, and I rarely talked during that time, I couldn’t forgive them for their selfishness in covering up the truth to save my life. I knew that I should be grateful to them, they had saved my life, but yet my heart felt only sadness.

Another murderer walked away free, just like when my wife and son had been killed, only in a way this was worse. My family’s murder had been a random act of violence, while the trillionaire behind the murder of the Yellowknife crew had coldly calculated her crime, hiring an assassin to infiltrate the Yellowknife’s crew to steal Eve’s ship. The trillionaire was not some street thug looking to make a few dollars, this person probably had all the advantages that a modern society could provide, yet they still wanted more.

I wanted so badly to teach the trillionaire a lesson, to make her pay for her crime. I wanted to finally take a stand against the evil of the world, to make things right for a change. It was ironic that I had spent the last five years cynically living outside of the law: bribing, smuggling, misusing prescription drugs, but now I only wanted to enforce the law on an individual who obviously thought they were above it. I had see so many innocent people die, each time I was so powerless to do anything about it, but maybe this time there was something I could do. Maybe I could get some small measure of revenge for Turgeon, Gill, and the others.

After two months of hard work, and use of the equipment Eve and Sirvenski had designed, I was in the best shape of my life. According to Eve I had the body of someone almost half my age, my body was trim, my muscles were strong, my hair was back to its natural color, and my face was free of wrinkles. I had no idea exactly how the machines worked, but it did not matter right now, all that mattered was getting the justice so long overdue.

I was healthy enough now that I was able to actually go into town for brief periods of time. Eve or Sirvenski always went with me, they said to protect me, but I knew that it was really to make sure that I never did anything rash. A couple times a week, Sirvenski and I would go out to the farm outside of Waterford where Sirvenski’s family now lived. With some of Eve’s help, Sirvenski’s mother had made a complete recovery and his sisters were starting to make friends with some of the local girls, which seemed to take a lot of pressure off of the young man’s shoulders.

One day while we were visiting, I convinced Sirvenski to let me help his mother with the dishes after dinner. While we were washing the dishes and chatting, I slipped a butcher knife into a pocket. I nervously went through the rest of the evening with the knife in my pocket, hoping that no one noticed it or things would get very awkward very quickly. Fortunately, no one found the weapon and I left the farm with Sirvenski without incident.

We drove back to the bluffs, and as we were walking towards our hidden base, I made my move. I took the knife from my pocket and slammed into Sirvenski from the side. We both tumbled to the ground, but I rolled on top of him, holding the knife to his throat. Sirvenski’s eyes went wide with horror. “Brent, what the hell are you doing?” He gasped.

“I want to know who this trillionaire is and where I can find her,” I growled.

“You know I can’t tell you that!”

“If you don’t, I’m going to give you an unscheduled tracheotomy. Now tell me!”

“This is crazy, Brent, I’m your friend!”

“Some friend you were, you should have just let me die!”

“I couldn’t do that, neither could Eve!”

“I want a name.”

Sirvenski looked at me for a long minute, the knife pressing just a bit harder into his throat. Finally, he relented with a sigh. “All right, if this is what you think you have to do. I’ll take you there.”

“Tell me who it is!”

“No, I want to go with you, to make sure you come back alive…for Eve’s sake.” I let Sirvenski up, following him to the car. There was an awkward silence for a long time, until we were out of Waterford and on the road heading west. Finally, Sirvenski said, “During those five months you were out, all Eve talked about how much she loved you and how much she wanted you to recover. That’s why she tested that equipment on herself first, she couldn’t bring herself to risk killing you. She could have shriveled up to a hag or shrunk down to just a zygote, but she would rather have that happen to her than to you. I wish I had someone like that.”

“I know that Eve loves me, and I love her too, but this isn’t about that. Some good people were killed and someone has to be held accountable for it,” I replied quietly.

Sirvenski snorted, “I hate to burst your bubble, Brent, but Parker and his gang were not saints. They were going to kill us, remember?”

“They were left alone on a dying ship for weeks, it’s no wonder they went a little crazy, especially when Palmer offered them such a tantalizing deal. You and I might have become just as desperate if we were abandoned on the Poseyville for weeks. And what about Turgeon, or Murray Gill, what did they do to deserve being murdered?”

Sirvenski shook his head, reaching into the pocket of his coat and pulling out the picture of Turgeon and her family I had taken from her quarters on the Yellowknife. “I found this with your personal effects. She was a pretty girl, but I don’t think…”

“Just drop it!” I shouted angrily, ripping the picture from his hands. “You don’t understand.”

“I’d like to, Brent. I know I haven’t known you that long, but this doesn’t seem like you.”

“Maybe I’m just tired of being me,” I replied icily.

“So what are you going to do when we get there? Wave your knife around? Drop in through the skylight?”

“I’ll think of something. It might help to know where we’re going first.”

Sirvenski nodded deliberately. “All right, I think it’s safe to tell you now. Have you ever heard of Halle Bradford?”

“Halle Bradford of Sirius Industries? I met her a few times at cocktail parties in Chicago, I never thought she was a trillionaire though.”

“It’s not widely known, but her family bought up huge tracts of land in the city when the Mafia families were taken down. She owns almost all of downtown Chicago, but the contracts are a carefully guarded secret.”

I started to chuckle, Sirvenski looking at me oddly, probably wondering if I was going to kill him now. “You realize the irony in this, don’t you? Sirius Industries built the Yellowknife, so her company built the ship we used to help unravel her scheme.”

Sirvenski joined in my laughter, “Well, then I guess we can tell her in person how durable her ships are.”

I shook my head. “First, though, we’ll need a few supplies.”

Sirvenski and I left the car in Montreal, taking a transit pod across Canada and Michigan to Chicago, the city I had left behind five years ago to escape the grief of my family’s murder. Now I was back, this time hoping to alleviate some of the grief I was feeling. I could see the immense silver skyscraper that dwarfed all of Chicago’s other buildings, the headquarters for Sirius Industries, from about twenty miles out over the lake. Our pod finally stopped downtown, depositing us about five blocks from the Fletcher A. Bradford Tower.

Halle Bradford’s father built the tower almost forty years ago, it had originally been named the Polaris Tower, because like the North Star, the tower was visible for such a distance that it could be used for navigation. Halle Bradford renamed the tower for her father almost ten years ago, after he had passed away. My old firm of Kovalchuk, Spezza, and Weiss handled some of Sirius Industries’ investments, I had been sent over to the tower in my first year with the firm, I could still remember the awe I felt when I entered the majestic lobby, my years in Maine never preparing me for such a magnificent place.

I felt barely even a twitch of emotion this time as I walked through the gold-trimmed doors, although I could hear Sirvenski gasp beside me. During the trip across Lake Michigan, Sirvenski had programmed a comcard that would scramble the weapons detectors in the tower, the lack of any overt alarms as we walked through the lobby was a good sign that the comcard was doing its job. I brushed past the tropical garden, the waterfall, and exquisite sculptures in the lobby, my eyes on the reception desk just in front of the elevators. If our weapons had been detected, it was a good bet that security guards would be waiting for us at the elevators to keep us from going up.

The reception desk an imposing barricade of dark wood trimmed with gold, a young blonde woman staring at us coldly as we approached. “Can I help you?” She asked.

I casually glanced around, trying to see if any guards were waiting to pounce on Sirvenski and I, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “I’m here to see Ms. Bradford,” I announced, trying to heap as much confidence as I could into my voice.

“Do you have an appointment?”

This next part was risky, but if my guess was right, it would be the most direct route to Bradford’s office. “No, she’s not expecting me, but tell her that Mr. Gallowes is here to see her.”

The receptionist looked skeptical, then tapped a few buttons on a terminal hidden from my sight by the desk. “He says his name is Mr. Gallowes…” The receptionist stopped and nodded. She looked up at me with a well-trained smile, “Here are your access chips, gentlemen, Ms. Bradford will be expecting you.” The receptionist handed us each a tiny circular chip to pin on our lapels, the chip would allow the building’s security personnel to keep track of us, and also to keep us from accessing any part of the tower they deemed we were not cleared for. I smiled at the receptionist and pinned the chip to my suit’s lapel, trying not to let my nervousness show as I walked to the elevator.

There were no security guards in the elevator waiting for us, the transparent car was completely empty. “Ms. Bradford’s office, please,” I commanded the elevator, bracing myself as the elevator shot upwards. “Well, I guess we’re in.”

“I guess,” Sirvenski replied. “You know Brent, I’ll make sure that no one kills you, but I’m not going to help you kill Bradford.”

“I understand,” I nodded as I took out the pistol I’d liberated from Sirvenski. During our stop in Montreal I had also bought Sirvenski a gun, which he took out now with a decidedly unhappy expression on his face. “Just stay out of my way.”

The Bradford Tower was over four hundred stories, but the elevator reached the top in just about a minute. I took a deep breath as the doors opened, ready for the trap I knew was waiting. Bradford was not stupid, she had four guards waiting just outside the door. Sirvenski and I each took two, using fléchettes coated with a tranquilizing chemical that immediately knocked out the four guards.

A middle-aged redhead, looking very much like an older version of Francesca Turgeon, stared at Sirvenski and I in horror, too paralyzed with fear to even reach for the emergency call button. “We’re not here to hurt you,” I said gently, firing a burst of fléchettes into her right leg. The woman collapsed to the floor, an almost tranquil expression on her face. “Don’t worry, we’ll show ourselves in.”

I pulled open the heavy wooden doors, my eyes darting around for more guards, but I didn’t see any. The only person in the enormous office was an elderly black woman, her grandmotherly appearance spoiled by the steel in her voice. “I expected that you’d find your way here without the help of my bodyguards,” Bradford said coldly.

I made a show of dumping out the tranquilizer rounds, replacing them with regular bullets. The gun finished loading with a click, then I leveled it at Bradford. “Put your hands on the desk and keep them there,” I ordered. Sirvenski stood at the back of the palatial office, his back turned to me so that he could watch the doors and try to ignore what I was about to do.

“Of course,” Bradford complied, setting her withered hands on the surface of the desk. “I imagine that you’re here to kill me, even though it was my money which allowed your friend to revive you.”

“I never asked them to save my life. I would have been just as happy dead, with you rotting in prison for your crimes,” I hissed.

Bradford looked me in the eyes, her voice level, “Tell me, Mr. Gallowes, did you think I enjoyed hiring a thug like Lindsey Pettyjohn? Did you think I wanted those people to die?”

The question stopped me in my tracks, but I quickly recovered. “I don’t think you care about anyone so long as you get what you want.”

Bradford shook her head, one eye watering just slightly. “You may think of me as a rich, powerful woman from an elite family, but my father worked his way up from the assembly line at Sirius Industries to run the company. He worked himself into an early grave just so that his children could have more than he did, so that his children could be something. I loved my father, and one of the things he taught me was to respect life, but…” Bradford stopped, taking a deep breath and wiping a tear away. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

“Sacrifices? Is that all they are to you?”

Bradford glared at me with barely-controlled anger. “Do you really think that Parker and his gang were going to just give me the artifact for the money I asked for? That girl Turgeon called me from the mining station in the asteroid belt demanding two hundred billion dollars and parts to repair Parker’s ship, or else they would destroy the artifact. I knew from that conversation that they would have sold it to the highest bidder, and who knows what that buyer might have done with it!”

“Probably nothing worse than what you were planning on doing.”

Bradford shook her head sadly, “Have you read the story of Prometheus, Mr. Gallowes?”

“I vaguely remember it,” I replied, wondering why Bradford would bring up Greek mythology when I had a gun aimed at her head.

“Prometheus was the Greek god of foresight, he stole fire from Mount Olympus and brought it to humanity. For this crime he was punished by being chained up, an eagle tearing out his liver every day for all eternity.” Bradford paused, perhaps to let the image sink into my brain. “Objects like that artifact are the fire that can make this world a better place, but with the knowledge we gain comes a cost. I despised Lindsey Pettyjohn, but it was a necessary evil to make certain that I obtained the artifact, so that I could use its technology to benefit all of humanity.”

“And yourself of course.”

Bradford snorted, “You seem to have benefited quite a bit from it.” Sirvenski turned around suddenly, looking as though he had been slapped in the face. “Yes, your friends think they pulled one over on me, and while I do not know the details, I do know that they used the artifact to create medical technology light years ahead of anything produced on Earth. Technology that saved you from life as a vegetable, Mr. Gallowes.”

“I didn’t ask them to do that,” I hissed.

Bradford smiled, spreading her hands wide on the desk. “Who is more the villain here, Mr. Gallowes? I would have shared what I learned with everyone, while your friends have hoarded beneficial technology for themselves. Technology that could save millions, perhaps even billions, kept a secret.”

“That isn’t how it is at all!” Sirvenski shouted at Bradford, his face flushing red with anger.

“No, of course not, but think how many lives have been lost that you might have saved all these months while you camped out in some damp cave, nursing your friend back to health.”

Sirvenski’s body quivered with rage, for a moment I thought he might actually kill Bradford before I could, but he stopped. “How dare you try to compare us to you!”

“Enough!” I interrupted, before Bradford could reply. “You are not any better than Lindsey Pettyjohn, Ms. Bradford. You are both cold-blooded killers, the only difference is that she enjoyed murder while you saw it as a necessary evil. You talk about improving humanity, about making sacrifices to create a better world, but what kind of world will it be with people like you at the controls? People who so casually throw away human lives, who arbitrarily decide who lives and who dies, because they think that their view of the world is the only right one. You may think of yourself as some great crusader, but you are nothing more than a murderer, and I am here to make sure that you pay for your crimes.”

“Really?” Bradford asked nonchalantly, cocking an eyebrow. “Exactly what good do you think will be achieved by my death?”

“It will bring justice for those killed by your greed.”

Bradford laughed, a very grandmotherly smile coming to her face. “I’ve studied your history, Mr. Gallowes. I know that you are not a killer. You may have been living on the fringes of civilization these past five years, but deep down you are still the same man who worked in this city for twenty years, a man who never had so much as a ticket for littering. Murder is beneath you and we both know it.”

Bradford started to ease her hands off the desk, but the click of my gun’s safety was enough of a warning for her to put them back where they were. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not going to work. You think you can manipulate me just like you manipulated Francesca Turgeon, you tricked that poor girl into waiting for what she thought was a ship to take her back to her comrades, but instead it was an assassin that you hired to kill her and infiltrate the crew.” I stopped, my anger rising. “You had Lindsey Pettyjohn butcher that girl and I’m going to hold you accountable!”

I noted with some satisfaction the way that Bradford’s eyes widened as I started to squeeze the trigger. A single shot would probably do it, would bring justice for Turgeon and Gill. Just a tiny pressure from my finger would exorcise the demon that had been haunting me for the last two months. Yet, I could not will my finger to pull the trigger.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a picture on Bradford’s desk, a picture of the old woman with three young children, presumably her grandchildren. My justice would rob those children of their grandmother, would deny them from ever seeing her or hugging her or telling her how much they loved her. My pulling the trigger would make me little better than whoever had killed my wife and son five years ago. Over the last two months I had become so twisted with thoughts of revenge that I never really considered the consequences of my actions, but now, looking at Bradford sitting there helplessly in her chair, the stark reality slapped me in the face. This was not justice, it was only a descent into madness, into the dark recesses of my soul, from which I would never be able to return. If I pulled the trigger I would become someone else, I could never look at myself in the mirror and see the man who had been a loving father and husband.

So I let up on the trigger, reaching into my coat pocket to take out the picture I had taken from Turgeon’s quarters in the Yellowknife. I set the picture down in front of Bradford, leaning forward to growl, “This is the woman you had killed. Every day you look in the mirror I hope you see her face and think of what you did, and what you almost made me do.” Bradford swallowed, visibly shaken by her brush with death. “If I hear that you are ever involved with any criminal activity, I will be back, and next time there will be nothing stopping me from finishing what I started today.”

I left the picture on the desk, turning and walking quickly towards the door. I stopped and turned back, but Bradford was just staring numbly at me. “Let’s go,” I said to Sirvenski and left Bradford, wondering if I had gotten through to her.

It was a long, silent ride back to Montreal. Sirvenski looked about to say something once or twice, but thought better of it. When our transit pod reached the station, he finally said, “I’m proud of you, Brent.”

I didn’t reply, I was too lost in my own thoughts. Walking in the rain towards where we had left the car, I stopped Sirvenski and shook his hand. “Tell Eve that I love her and I’ll be back…someday,” I said, tears coming to my eyes.

“What? Where are you going?” Sirvenski asked.

“I have to work some things out,” I replied, disappearing into a crowd of people, leaving Sirvenski to stand alone in the rain. I bought a ticket for a transit pod, but I had no idea where it was going, nor did I care. I had thought that killing Bradford was the answer to ridding myself of the guilt I felt, yet when it finally came time to do it I realized that it would not make me feel better at all. Until I could rid myself of my demons, I couldn’t go back to Eve, her love would only be a constant reminder of my shame. The transit pod started down the tube, setting me on my way for the longest journey of my life.

Chapter Nine

2007-06-12T13:33:00.001-07:00

Chapter Nine

The Jovian Research Station was coming into view, its five joined tubular sections forming a silver cube that seemed miniscule compared to the Solar System’s two largest planets, both of which were faintly in sight of the Yellowknife’s sensor array. I took a deep breath as I looked at the station, everything would hinge on the next few moments and my ability to fool Palmer as I hoped to. The lives of Eve and Sirvenski, if he was still alive, were at stake as well as my own. It would also be my only chance to obtain justice for Turgeon, Gill, and the others killed for the greed of Palmer and his associates. It all rested on my shoulders, the shoulders of a middle-aged former accountant who had never been in combat, definitely not a cheering thought.

The Poseyville was docked with the station, which was not entirely expected, but it gave me hope that my plan could work. My old hauler was in communications range, but I hesitated. I had never been in combat and I had never been involved with the theater, but very soon I would be thrust into both. I was tempted to pop one of the last painkillers in the medical kit, but I resisted the urge, I would need a clear head for what I was about to do. Taking another deep breath, I toggled on the communications array. I forced my voice as low as I could, growling, “Did you forget something, Brian?”

If Palmer was even slightly rattled at the malice I tried to load into my voice, he didn’t sound it. “I knew I should have checked to make sure you were dead,” Palmer replied casually.

“Don’t worry, you won’t have long to regret that mistake.”

“You’re right. Why don’t you come on over so I can finish the job.”

I laughed, trying to sound as insane as I could, though under the circumstances it wasn’t so hard. “Oh, I’m going to come over all right.”

I heard a metallic sound on the other end, a click like the sound of a safety being taken off of a gun. “You try anything, Brent, and I’m going to redecorate the bridge with Sirvenski’s gray matter. Say hello for the nice man, kid.”

“Don’t do what he says, Brent, he’ll kill us both!” Sirvenski shouted frantically. I wished that we had a visual link so I could determine what shape the young flight engineer was in, but it probably wasn’t going to matter in a minute anyway.

“Let him go, Brian, and I might spare you.”

Palmer laughed, snorting, “You? You aren’t a killer, Brent, you’re just some candy-ass who only came out here because he doesn’t have the balls to deal with reality. You’re out of your league, Brent, just surrender for your sake as well as the kid’s.”

I was stopped in my tracks, forced to make a decision. Could I sacrifice Sirvenski to save Eve and keep the technology of her ship from falling into the wrong hands? I shook my head, reaching for the controls, slowing the Yellowknife’s progress. “Brent, no!” Sirvenski shouted. There were the sounds of a struggle, followed by a shot, then silence.

“No!” I screamed, jamming the throttle control back up to full speed.

“You keep coming and you’ll be next,” Palmer hissed.

I felt my body shaking with rage, this time there was no need to force malice into my voice. “Lying on the deck of the cargo bay bleeding to death gave me a lot of time to think, to put things in perspective. All my life I’ve been getting pushed around by people like you, people who think they can just take what they want. You’ve taken away two friends and my ship, and I’m not going to let you get away with it, no matter what it takes. This time I’m going to take what I want!”

I would have given almost anything to see Palmer’s face at that moment, but his voice conveyed his shock. “Oh shit,” he murmured. Palmer seemed to gather his courage, his tone going back to its usual arrogant coolness. “Whatever you’re trying it’s not going to work. Consider this your final warning.”

I shrieked with laughter, screaming, “You’ve got less than two minutes until I give you metal enema! Consider that your final warning!”

“All right, Brent, you ant to play at being a hero, then let’s go. I’ll see you in two minutes,” Palmer growled and the connection was terminated. I checked the navigation computer and saw that I had maybe one minute left until the Yellowknife plowed into the Poseyville at full speed. There was no going back now, even if I cut the power to the engines there wouldn’t be enough time for the Yellowknife to stop. It was all or nothing now.

It took about thirty seconds to run to the Yellowknife’s emergency escape hatch and tighten the helmet on my spacesuit. I had searched through the Yellowknife, but all the suits were gone, although I had been able to locate a pair of magnetic restraints that would figure into my plan. Without another suit, I had been forced to hastily patch my suit together with adhesive tape, fabric strips, and some medical gauze. The suit wouldn’t be very sturdy, but it only had to last for a minute or so. There was a chance that Palmer might still be watching and detect the escape hatch blowing, but it was more likely that he was running aboard the station to wait out the collision. Without preamble, I slapped the release on the hatch, the metal door blasting off into space, my body being pulled along with it.

There was a moment when I thought that I was going to be sucked into empty space, leaving me stranded, but I managed to hook my fingers onto a part of the Yellowknife’s hull and work my way to the top of the hauler. My spacesuit’s boots were barely able to keep me from flying into freefall as I charged down the length of the ship. I had maybe thirty seconds to make it to the Poseyville and secure myself to its hull before the ships collided. I ran a few more steps then threw myself up from the Yellowknife’s hull.

I cut in the maneuvering thrusters almost immediately, propelling myself across the gap between the two ships. There wasn’t much time left, about ten seconds to get myself into position. I landed on the edge of the Poseyville’s cargo bay, slamming down the two magnetic restraints I had taken from the Yellowknife’s airlock. Then all hell broke loose.

There was of course no sound in space, no crunching or creaking of metal, but I felt the Poseyville shake beneath me, nearly bucking me from the ship’s hull, but the restraints held fast. I ducked down as much as possible, hoping that no debris from the crash tore into my patched-up spacesuit. The Poseyville continued to tremble and twist beneath me as the momentum from the Yellowknife threatened to tear the other hauler from its docking berth with the research station. There were fortunately no explosions on either ship, I had tried to steer the Yellowknife into the midsection of the Poseyville, away from the cargo bay, bridge, and fusion generators. After almost a minute more, the hull beneath me settled, allowing me to remove the restraints and take a look around.

The entire forward section of the Yellowknife was buried in the midsection of the Poseyville, making certain that neither ship would fly again any time soon. There was a cloud of debris hovering all around, some pieces as tall as I was, while most were tiny fragments, but all of it could easily depressurize my spacesuit if I hung around too long. I could see that the Yellowknife’s engines had burned out, probably when the command link from the bridge was severed by the collision, which allowed the single mass to float serenely in space, apparently still attached to the research station. I had been hoping that the collision would tear the Poseyville from the station, so that Palmer would be cut off if he had sought refuge on the station, but there was no time to correct that problem now. I went to the cargo bay door controls, hoping that Sirvenski would come through one last time.

I typed in the command to open the doors, holding my breath for a moment as the computer paused. Finally, a green light came on and the doors slowly ground open, revealing the spectacular shape of Eve’s ship below. I fired the maneuvering jets to propel myself down, knowing that it was now a race against time to achieve my goal. Palmer would have undoubtedly noticed the cargo doors opening and would know where I had gone, I would only have a couple of minutes to eject Eve’s ship into space so that its engines could recharge and she could be free.

I raced towards the cargo bay control console even before my feet had touched the ground, my entire being focused solely on getting Eve out of this place so that Palmer’s trillionaire couldn’t try to take her apart for research. I scanned the controls for a moment, looking for the button to deactivate the force field that held atmosphere in the cargo bay while the doors were open. Attaching the magnetic restraints to the floor I pressed the button and watched as the cargo bay turned into a maelstrom. Cargo containers, tools, and anything else not bolted down began to fly off into space, yet Eve’s ship remained steadfastly where it was. “No!” I screamed, activating the force field and sprinting towards the ship. I touched the hull, but this time nothing happened, although I could feel something at the edge of my mind, almost like a shadow lurking there. “Damn it, Eve, go!”

“No, I can’t leave you. Come with me,” Eve’s voice called softly.

It was the moment I had been dreading, when I would finally have to choose whether to spend eternity with Eve, or to stay and fill out my last, lonely years. Tears stained my eyes as I bit out, “I love you, Eve, but I can’t go with you.”

“No, please, I can wait until you disengage the force field…”

“It’s not that, it’s that…it’s that what you’re offering me isn’t life.” I stopped, wishing I could touch her one last time, see her one last time. “It’s just an illusion, a fantasy.”

“Our love isn’t an illusion, you know that.”

“I do, but…but we’d never be able to have children, to watch our grandchildren play, to leave any kind of legacy behind us. We would be two permanent outcasts going from place to place forever. That’s not the kind of life I want, I’m sorry.”

There was silence for a moment and I wondered if Eve was considering to simply abduct me, but she couldn’t until I released the force field so that her ship could be ejected into space to recharge. Finally, I heard her voice whisper sadly, “Farewell, then. I will always love you and treasure our time together.”

“So will I,” I choked on a sob, lightly patting the surface of her ship to try and convey how much she meant to me. “I love you.”

I pulled back from the ship, running for the control console to deactivate the force field again. I took my gun from a storage compartment in the spacesuit, nervously looking for Palmer as I neared the console. I reached out for the button, but as my hand grazed the console’s surface I suddenly found myself spinning to the deck, a bloody hole torn in my left side. I collapsed to my knees, groping to find the button as another shot ripped through the spacesuit and embedded itself in my shoulder. “Your friend isn’t going anywhere just yet!” Palmer called out. I looked around the hold, but I couldn’t see him anywhere, he was probably hiding behind one of the crates or pieces of equipment that hadn’t been sucked out into space yet.

I triggered a burst from my weapon, groaning as I tried to hoist myself up against the console. I smashed my right hand triumphantly against the force field release button, collapsing to the deck, no longer caring if my magnetic restraints held me down or not. The cargo bay once again turned to chaos as the vacuum of space greedily took everything that it could. Amongst the debris I saw the white figure of a spacesuit hurdling towards me. I brought up my gun and fired, but it was already too late. Palmer cartwheeled into me, one hand slapping away my weapon while the other stabbed the button to restore the force field. Eve’s ship, which had managed to get halfway out of the cargo bay, now came slamming back to the deck along with a downpour of tools and other debris. “That’s better,” Palmer hissed, pulling off the helmet of his spacesuit. I had failed.

I numbly watched as Palmer took off his spacesuit and closed the cargo bay doors, my body too sore and numb to respond to my commands any longer. “That was a nice trick, Brent, but fortunately for me I was able to figure it out.” Palmer’s gaze flicked over to Eve’s ship, a knowing smile coming to his face. “So there’s some kind of alien in that thing?”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” I replied hoarsely. Palmer set his gun on the console out of my reach as he stripped off my spacesuit and searched me for weapons.

“Oh I think you will, in time,” he looked me in the eye, smiling darkly. “If you thought that what Pettyjohn did to Turgeon was bad, just wait until you see what I’ll do to you to find out what you know about this thing.”

“Go to Hell.”

Palmer took his pistol from the console, the smile remaining fixed on his face. “You’d save yourself a lot of pain if you just told me now.”

I started to laugh, peals of laughter that grew more and more shrill, until I was cackling like a maniac. “You think you’ve got me, don’t you? But how long do you think it will be until your business partner sends another assassin out here? You don’t have a working ship, there’s no way for you to escape! So go ahead and torture me all you want, it won’t be long until your corpse is crated up next to mine!”

Palmer’s face flushed, his finger tensed on the trigger, but he held back. My eyes darted around to find a weapon, finally locating a piece of pipe just inches from my right hand. If I could keep Palmer distracted, I might be able to reach it and turn the tables. “Don’t worry about me, Brent, you just worry about yourself.”

“Come on, Palmer, it was a good try for an UNDA flunky, but you just couldn’t handle this whole operation by yourself,” I taunted Palmer, my right hand inching towards the pipe while I watched Palmer’s face turn bright red with anger, his body quivering with rage.

“I am not an UNDA flunky! That stupid bastard ran into me! He ran into me!” Palmer screamed, pulling the trigger just as I grabbed the pipe and swung it as hard as I could into his legs. My swing was too weak to hurt Palmer much, but it was enough to throw his aim off. Palmer’s shot grazed my right shoulder as it buried itself in a wall of the cargo bay, the pistol hiccupping from Palmer’s hand and clattering out of sight. I pushed myself to my feet, but before I could deactivate the force field, Palmer swept my legs out from under me, sending me crashing back to the deck, the pipe falling from my hand.

Before I could push myself back to my feet, Palmer was up, taking the pipe off of the deck. “You stupid bean-counter, I’m going to finish you now!” Palmer brought the pipe whistling towards me, but I brought up my left arm, screaming as I heard the bone snap from the force of Palmer’s blow. I took hold of the pipe, using my right arm and Palmer’s momentum to throw him back to the deck. I tried once again to reach the console, but the pipe smashed into my neck. I screamed in pain, crumpling to the deck, my entire body going numb below the neck.

Palmer snarled in triumph while I could only watch as he brought the pipe up to break my skull open. I was vaguely aware of a flash of purple light, then the stuttering sound of a machine-gun firing. Palmer’s chest was torn open by the impact of dozens of slugs, the pipe falling from his hands, his body collapsing on top of mine. There was an eerie silence for a minute, until I felt the weight of Palmer’s body lifted and found myself looking up into the face of an angel.

“Eve, what have you done?” I groaned. “You…you can’t go back now.”

Eve smiled, tears running down her cheeks as she took my hand. “I don’t want to go back, not if I can’t have you.”

“But…”

“Just be quiet and lie still, I’ll be back with help soon.” She didn’t have to tell me twice, my mind was already drifting towards unconsciousness as shock set in. I was suddenly too weak to even speak, vaguely feeling Eve’s hand pull away from mine and hearing her footsteps clanging along the deck as she hurried to find help. I listened to the echoes fade, then I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.

Chapter Eight

2007-06-12T13:32:00.003-07:00

Chapter Eight

“Looks like I got here just in time,” Palmer said, his boots clanging on the deck as he approached my fallen form. “I suppose you wanted to get a look at my little prize.”

“What are you planning to do with it?”

“What do you think? I’m going to sell it of course,” Palmer snapped, he squatted over me, his pistol leveled at my chest. “A certain trillionaire will give me a pretty big chunk of change to get a hold of this.”

“So that was your plan all along? Steal this artifact and sell it?”

Palmer snorted, “It wasn’t my plan. The trillionaire hired Pettyjohn to impersonate Turgeon and steal the thing, I just had the good fortune of delivering some electronics that she had requested.” I remembered seeing Palmer taking a cart of smuggled goods out of the Poseyville when we reached the customs station at Mars, I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but I wish I had. “After a little roll in the hay, Pettyjohn asked for my help in double-crossing the trillionaire by stealing this artifact and ransoming it to him for much more than he was willing to pay Pettyjohn initially.”

“But then you got greedy and bumped her off,” I filled in the blanks, the entire scheme starting to make sense.

“I never did get to thank you for that, Brent. I was going to arrange some kind of accident to kill Pettyjohn, but you and Sirvenski’s meddling gave me the opportunity I needed to take care of her without questions.”

“So what are you going to do now?” I asked, trying to get as much information as I could, even though I could see no way out of this mess. I didn’t have a weapon and Palmer had a gun only inches from my chest, if I moved he would finish me for sure.

“Well, first I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to load the object on the Poseyville, and head off to complete the transaction.”

“What about Sirvenski? Did you kill him?”

“Oh no, I haven’t killed James yet. I’ll need his help for a little longer, but he’ll become expendable soon enough.” Palmer stood up, an irritating grin on his face. “Story time is over now, Brent.” Without any further preamble, Palmer pumped three shots squarely into my chest, turned on his heel, and left. For a moment I stared up at the ceiling, cursing myself for failing Eve, Sirvenski, and all the others, then I blacked out.

It was the second time in the last twenty-four hours that I had opened my eyes wondering if I was dead. This time, though, there was no wonderful illusion of days gone by. Instead, I was looking at the ruined cargo bay of the Yellowknife, Eve’s ship nowhere in sight. I looked down at my spacesuit, checking the damage, but there was not much that I could see. I gingerly got to my feet, unable to put much weight on my injured knee, and worked at getting the spacesuit off so I could better examine my injuries. It took nearly ten minutes, but I finally managed to strip the suit off, looking at my wounds while I tried to catch my breath.

I had gotten lucky in that Palmer had used fléchettes instead of slugs. The damage to my knee and midsection was considerable, but not deep enough to be fatal. If I could find a medical kit I should be able to bandage the wounds enough to prevent infection and blood loss. I tried to think of where the medical kit was stored on the Poseyville, deciding that the bridge would be the most obvious place to start. I found a severed pipe to use as a walking stick and started to limp down the empty corridors of the Yellowknife.

It was only when I stepped into the dark hallways that I realized that I had more serious problems than finding the medical kit. Palmer had apparently cut power to the freighter, which meant that not only was the Yellowknife dead in space, but there would soon be no oxygen left for me to breathe. I quickened my pace to the bridge as much as I could, praying that I could find some way to restore power before I ended up dying from suffocation.

The bridge was completely dark, and unfortunately I hadn’t had the foresight to bring a light with me. I groped about in the darkness, eventually finding the medical kit attached to the side of a terminal. Crossing my fingers, I opened the box and rummaged around as best I could, finally locating a tiny light that would at least let me see the controls. I soon realized, though, that nothing on the bridge would do me much good without power. After trying in vain to activate the emergency power supply from the captain’s station, I stumbled back down the halls to the engine room.

I could already sense the air was thinner, it wouldn’t be too much longer before I’d start to experience the nasty effects of oxygen deprivation. I examined every terminal, every piece of equipment in the room, but there didn’t seem to be any kind of activation for the power supply. I tried to slow my breathing and to conjure up all the classes I had taken on hauler maintenance, hoping that I could remember something useful. I couldn’t remember any technique for manually restoring power if the emergency power supply was cut off. Cursing under my breath I scanned the room again, finally slamming a fist against a wall.

The power suddenly snapped on, the engine room filling with dim red light. For a moment I simply stood in shock, my hand throbbing in pain, wondering what had happened, then I shook myself back to awareness. Of course my brute force had not restored power, it had to be Sirvenski. He must have implanted some command to shut down all systems until the Poseyville was out of range. I thanked him silently, limping back towards the bridge to decide what to do next.

I sat in the captain’s chair, mulling over the possibilities. All I had was myself, barely able to walk and unarmed, and a damaged ship being held together by replacement hull plates that may or may not have been properly installed by robots under Palmer’s control. The obvious solution was to call for help, let the military find Palmer and sort things out. Unfortunately, Eve’s ship complicated things considerably.

Even if the military could hunt down Palmer, letting them have Eve’s ship would be little better than Palmer selling it to some elusive trillionaire. In fact, the military and the trillionaire would probably end up doing the same things to the ship. They would study it, try to take it apart, until they had gleaned every kernel of knowledge they could from it. Even though the hull of Eve’s ship was supposed to be too tough to cut open, who knew what could happen when it was in the possession of the military or the trillionaire? There was no telling what kind of knowledge could be learned from it, or what that knowledge could be used for. Whether or not I could really get past my anger at her for deceiving me, a large part of me still loved Eve, and there was no way I would let her be experimented on, not if I could help it. So, that ruled out asking the military or anyone else for help, which meant I was on my own.

The next decision was about where Palmer would be heading now, the answer to that question came relatively easy. The Yellowknife had been running supplies to the Jovian Research Station, a station that was known to have the financial support of an unknown trillionaire, a trillionaire who had a great curiosity in space exploration. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to put the pieces together and come to the conclusion that the Jovian Research Station’s benefactor was the one who wanted Eve’s ship. It was a safe bet, then, that Palmer would be heading for the research station to conclude his business. Of course Palmer could easily go to Mars or the moon or anywhere else, but the research station made sense.

The factor working in favor of the Jovian Research Station was its remote location. The military had virtually no presence in the area, a patrol rarely stopping by for a visit, so there was only a marginal chance of any interference from them. Unless the mysterious trillionaire had already sent a back-up agent to the station, there weren’t likely to be any saboteurs or assassins waiting to take Palmer out, and it would be easy to spot any other ships coming to deliver someone. The station didn’t have weapons, nor was it likely its personnel were well-trained in combat, so it could do little to interfere with Palmer’s operation, especially when he started waving around his pistol. When I added it all up, the research station made a hell of a good place for Palmer to go.

I set the ship’s navigation computer to work, plotting a course for the station and letting the autopilot handle the rest. It would take over a day to reach the station, giving me plenty of time to scavenge for weapons and get some rest. I decided to do the latter first, downing half of the medical kit’s painkillers and stumbling back to the nearest quarters. On the Poseyville there were three individual quarters, but with the Yellowknife’s larger crew they had to double-up. My brain was already starting to get hazy when I collapsed into a bunk, my mind feeling as free as when I had been inside Eve’s ship. After only a few moments I fell into a deep, fevered sleep.

I ended up sleeping for eighteen hours, during that time I was haunted by nightmares. In the most vivid, I was back at Kingfisher Bluffs. I could see Eve standing at the bench, beckoning to me, a look of love in her eyes. I ran through the grass, feeling as though I were flying into her arms. I pressed close to her, her scent filling my nostrils, as did something else, the smell of blood. I looked up at Eve in shock, but it was no longer Eve at all. As I collapsed into the soft grass I found myself staring up at Palmer, a gleaming silver knife in his hand, coated with my own blood. I heard his mocking laughter ringing in my ears, until I woke up screaming, the sheets covered in sweat.

I lay in bed for a few moments, staring up at the bunk above me, telling myself that it had only been a dream, that I was still alive. I stumbled to the bathroom, splashing water on my face after I threw up whatever was left in my stomach. There was blood showing through my bandages, but when I stripped them off, the bleeding seemed to have stopped. I still felt a little hazy, whether from the painkillers or the fever I couldn’t tell, but I was strong enough to stumble back into the quarters I had been sleeping in to rummage for supplies. When I opened the closet door my jaw dropped in surprise. Stitched on one of the jumpsuits was the name, “Turgeon”, which meant that I had been sleeping in her quarters all this time.

There was no real reason for me to feel guilty about Turgeon’s death, Pettyjohn had killed her long before I had even heard her name, but I still could not help but feel a shiver every time I thought of her. Maybe it was more that familiar feeling of helplessness than guilt, Turgeon was just another person I could do nothing to save, just like Becky, Steve, the rest of the Yellowknife crew, and Murray Gill. Maybe it was because Turgeon had been so young that the thought of her brutal murder rekindled the father inside of me. Or maybe it was just that I felt like such a fool for falling for the ruse created by Pettyjohn and Palmer. No matter the reason, seeing Turgeon’s clothes in the closet made me suddenly feel very cold and queasy.

After a few deep breaths, and a brief return to the bathroom, I forced myself to look through the closet for anything I could use. Unfortunately there were no supplies in the room, no hidden compartments, and no clothes that would fit me. As I took one last look, I saw that someone had turned down a picture of Turgeon and her family on the room’s tiny desk. I felt tears come to my eyes looking at the young woman’s smiling face as she stood happily frozen in time with her family. I stuffed the picture into a pocket, so that if I made it through this I could return it to her family. It would by no means bring her back, but at least it could give her family some comfort to know that she cared enough about them to keep their picture.

I tore myself from Turgeon’s quarters, limping to the bridge to make sure that the ship was on course. All systems were working within the normal limits, although the hull was close to buckling where Eve’s ship had punched a hole through the cargo bay. The temporary repairs were effective enough, but they were not intended to withstand the pressure I was exerting on them by having the ship go at full speed. After checking the ship’s systems, I ransacked the bridge for anything useful, but other than the medical kit there was little else that would be of much help. I swallowed a few more painkillers from the medical kit then made my back to the crew quarters to continue my foraging.

The other crew quarters were just as devoid of needed supplies as Turgeon’s had been. I did manage to squeeze into one of Hauer’s jumpsuits so that I was able to throw out the tattered, bloodstained clothes I had been wearing for almost two days now. Apparently Parker had been less permissible about his crew’s smuggling activities, that or else the crew used somewhere else to stash their illegal goods during cargo runs. With that in mind, I went to Parker’s quarters and rummaged through his personal effects.

His drawers contained only clothes and a few comcards that had personal logs, letters to home, and other messages that were not important at the moment. There was an old UNDA footlocker at the foot of his bed, but the lock had been broken and anything useful already taken out, most likely by Palmer. Finally, I looked into the closet, nothing helpful immediately visible, but maybe if Parker was enough like me, he would have a secret hiding place in the closet. I pounded against the walls, trying to find a hollow spot or some opening mechanism, but there was nothing. “Damn it!” I shouted in frustration, my eyes turning upward just enough to notice a tiny crack in the ceiling of the closet. I dragged the footlocker into the closet and stood on top of it so that I could pry open the false ceiling and look inside. Panning around with a flashlight from the engine room I could see a flat gray case hidden at the far end of the compartment.

Parker’s hiding place was just big enough so that I could crawl through until the case was within reach. I could see that the metal case had not been removed in some time, it was covered in dust and the computerized lock was burned out. With a few well-placed blows from my flashlight I managed to break open the case’s lock and look inside, resisting the urge to scream for joy. Inside the case was a very well-preserved gun.

The black weapon was neither a pistol nor a rifle, the weapon was too large for the former and too small for the latter. The weight and barrel length were about right for a standard handgun, but the weapon had the ammunition capacity of an assault rifle. I was no expert in guns, but I knew that this was not a civilian issue weapon, it was probably something that Parker had acquired during his UNDA service. I hadn’t looked at Parker’s service record, but this weapon was not standard issue, which most likely meant that Parker had served in some kind of special forces unit. I couldn’t be certain why Parker had not used the weapon earlier, but it was probably because he was planning to use it later to double-cross Palmer or his own crew. It didn’t matter

now, though, all that really mattered was whether or not the weapon functioned. I hauled it down with me, placing the case on Parker’s bed and hefting the gun from the container. There was still a clip of ammunition, which I awkwardly figured out how to load, I chambered a round and shot one of Parker’s pillows, the pillow exploding in a hail of synthetic stuffing. Satisfied that I now had a working weapon, I slung the gun on my shoulder and headed for the bridge to come up with a plan to stop Palmer.

There were a lot of variables that I would not be able to determine until I was actually at the research station that hindered my planning. I had no idea where Sirvenski would be and if he would even still be alive, if Palmer would have docked the Poseyville or if he would have it away from the station. I suspected that Eve’s ship would still be inside of my old hauler, but if Palmer had already worked out a deal then it could be inside of the station. There were too many questions and not enough answers.

One thing I did know was that I would need to jury-rig the Yellowknife’s fusion reactors so that I could overload them and destroy not only the Yellowknife, but the Poseyville and probably the station as well. I of course would be killed along with everyone else, although Eve’s ship would survive, but it was definitely a last resort I had to prepare for. If I could find a way to trigger the overload remotely that would be even more to my advantage.

Sitting in Parker’s old chair, I sat and took stock of my situation. I had a gun, a ship, and not much else. I couldn’t count on any back-up, I didn’t have the military background Palmer possessed, and I wasn’t in very good shape for fighting. The situation looked pretty hopeless, but there had to be a way, some way that I could surprise Palmer. I already knew that Palmer was not infallible, he had made at least two mistakes by not checking to make sure I was dead and by leaving me with a working ship. Of course, if Palmer was smart, it didn’t matter what tricks I came up with, he would just wait by Eve’s ship until I arrived to rescue her…

Except of course that he had no idea that I was trying to rescue Eve at all. In fact, it was doubtful he even knew what the alien object was or that there was someone alive inside of it. All that he would know when I showed up in the Yellowknife was that I was coming for him. If I keep him thinking along those lines, then there was a chance that I could free Eve’s ship before he even knew it.

Chapter Seven

2007-06-12T13:32:00.001-07:00

Chapter Seven

I almost expected Becky to transform into some horrible monster, a demon sent to torture me, but she stayed as she was, staring back at me in confusion. “Well, who are you? Why are you masquerading as my wife?” I shouted over the sound of crashing waves, my hands curling into fists as rage coursed through me.

“You don’t like this?”

“No! How dare you pretend to be her! How dare you make a mockery of our love this way!”

“I’m sorry, I thought…I thought that this would make you most comfortable,” my wife’s imposter stammered.

“Comfortable? How can I be comfortable kissing a stranger? I don’t know who you are, but you’ve turned my fondest memory into a fucking joke!” I roared, taking a step towards the usurper.

To my surprise, whoever was masquerading as Becky dropped to her knees, burying her face in her hands, tears leaking through her fingers to drip into the grass. I could hear her violent sobs over the sound of the ocean, but I couldn’t force myself to get any closer to her. Instead, I stood stoically while she cried, not sure if I should comfort her or hurl her from the bluffs. Finally, I sat on the bench and waited for her to finish, then I would demand some answers.

Time seemed to stretch into infinity while I watched the distant ocean, trying to force dark thoughts from my mind, until the stranger finally got to her feet, wiping away a few final tears. There was an uneasy silence, the imposter’s eyes boring into my own as though she were trying to read my thoughts. A heartbeat later, everything around me changed.

The first thing I noticed was that my lean, twenty-three year old frame had been replaced again by my sagging, middle-aged body, a twinge of disappointment running through me. I was still on Kingfisher Bluffs, but now the sun was high in the sky, hidden behind a thick fog that seemed to obscure everything. I couldn’t see the stranger in the fog, for a few moments I thought maybe she had vanished, but then I saw someone coming through the mist and my jaw dropped in shock.

This was not the same young woman who had been crying uncontrollably in the grass just a few minutes ago. This was a mature woman who walked with the grace and confidence of someone who was always in control. She was not beautiful in the traditional sense, but she had a simple, elegant style that allowed her natural beauty to show through. Whoever this woman was, she did not need flashy jewelry, her long, lean body was adorned only in a simple powder blue suit, her honey-brown hair allowed to fall freely down to the middle of her back. I could tell from the faint wrinkles around her blue eyes and red lips that she was probably in her early forties, old enough to command my respect and young enough to command my affection. She flashed a beautiful smile of dazzling white teeth, extending her hand. This time I didn’t feel foolish at all for kissing a woman’s hand, nor did this woman react with the same disdain that Pettyjohn had when I had done the same thing in Fischer’s office.

“My real name is rather hard to pronounce, but you can call me Eve, I’m sorry that we got off to such a rough start, but I was desperate…and lonely, I thought tricking you was the only way to keep you from pushing me away.”

Eve sat down next to me on the bench, her smile fading quickly, a sad look in her eyes. “If you don’t mind my asking, where exactly are we?” I asked.

Eve shrugged her shoulders a little bit, “It might be hard to understand, but I guess the best way to put it is to say that we’re in my ship.”

“Your ship?” I stopped, the realization hitting me like a slap in the face. “The alien object…You mean that I’m inside of it? I’m not dead?”

“No, you’re not dead,” Eve answered, shaking her head. “When you touched the hull of my ship, I broke down your physical structure and brought it inside for further study.”

I jumped up from the bench, my eyes going wide. “Study? Then what was all this stuff about pretending to be my wife and the crying, was that just an act to study my reactions?”

Eve stood, trying to reach out to me with one hand, but I jumped backwards to keep her out of reach. This woman before was no woman at all, but some kind of alien, an alien who was trying to use me as some kind of guinea pig. “It’s not like that at all,” she soothed. “Just sit back down and I’ll explain from the beginning.”

I was tempted to run, or maybe even to throw myself off of the bluffs just to see what would happen, but when I looked into Eve’s eyes I couldn’t do it. Alien or not, there was something in those blue eyes, something that made me want to know more about her. So I sat down on the bench and listened to her story.

As Eve began, everything around us changed so that our bench was actually floating in space, looking down on a blue-green world. “This is my home, Sohebia, where I was born over two million years ago.” The planet became larger and larger before me, until I was actually plunging through thick white clouds, the bench finally stopping to hover in the turquoise sky. I was overlooking a massive cityscape, huge buildings composed of the same metal as Eve’s ship were all about me, long coffin-looking objects buzzing every which way. The scene was suddenly on the move, one of the buildings looming closer and closer until I actually went through the wall and found myself in a large room painted in various shades of blue. I could see something standing in the corner, it was almost eight feet tall at least, its violet, four-armed body rail-thin and completely hairless. The perspective changed ever so slightly and I could see that the alien was not standing, but resting against a padded section of the wall, floating a few inches off of the floor by some unseen device. There was something over the alien’s eyes, maybe some kind of computer, but there was no way to tell. I could see Eve motion towards the alien out of the corner of my eye. “I was roughly seventeen years old when life on Sohebia changed forever. As you can see, Sohebians were like you once, we were completely physical in nature, relying on digested nutrients to keep us alive. Everything changed with the announcement of The Discovery.”

The bench was on the move again, this time flying through walls, the coffin-shaped objects that I realized were cars of some sort, and even through the bodies of Sohebians, until the bench suddenly stopped and spiraled through the ground, into a dark room. I couldn’t see anything except a faint purple light in the center of the room, which showed the vague outline of several Sohebians. “The Discovery was the greatest wonder in my people’s history. It allowed every Sohebian to become virtually immortal by separating the physical from the spiritual, the soul as you would call it. The physical material could be preserved, should anyone want to go back to a corporeal existence, while the soul was set loose to experience life without boundaries, without the need for food, water, air, or even sleep. At first the scientists thought they could make a fortune off of the process by selling it to the very rich, but after a series of bloody revolts, the government mandated that the Transformation was the right of all people.”

The bench eased a little closer to the center of the room, so that I could just make out a Sohebian body encased in some kind of machine, although it was too dark to see any details. “I was eighteen when my parents took me to be Transformed. I was strapped into this machine and forced to endure hours of endless pain.” There was suddenly a flash of blue-green light, a faint purple mist rising out of the machine to float just next to the bench. “When the torment finally stopped, I found myself floating about the room, looking down upon my body, my first thought that I must have died during the procedure, but I soon understood that I was not dead, I was Transformed.”

Everything about me suddenly changed, and I was once again looking down on the Sohebian city, but now there were no lights, no coffin-shaped vehicles darting about, only streaks of purple flitting here and there. “Within two years, nearly every Sohebian was Transformed, the few who rejected the procedure fleeing to remote areas to establish communes where they could live out the rest of their lives.” The bench began its wild ride once more, streaking across aquamarine oceans at a supersonic pace. Ahead of me I could just make out a purple smudge on the horizon, one of the “Transformed” Sohebians. “I spent those two years exploring my planet as I would have never been able to do while I was corporeal. I traveled to the bottoms of the oceans, to the tops of the highest peaks, even into the bellies of vicious predators. I was more free than ever before.”

Eve shook her head sadly, “Transformed Sohebians started to call themselves The Enlightened, but in my case the opposite was true. It was as though I had regressed to being a small child again, my only concern to entertain myself, to have fun. My games became increasingly reckless, taunting packs of wild creatures, flying into the heart of an erupting volcano, climbing higher and higher into the sky until I was close to being torn asunder by disturbances in the upper regions of the atmosphere. The games stopped being fun as I became aware that there was very little danger involved, leaving me with an emptiness inside, a loss of any direction or purpose to my life.”

The bench seemed to wander aimlessly for a few long moments, Eve silently composing herself to continue. “It was common, especially for those who had been young when undergoing the Transformation process, to have the same kind of confusion I felt. Some of the more well-adjusted Enlightened Sohebians created a series of refuges where those like myself could go to receive guidance.” A tropical island appeared below the bench, a squat structure located at a clearing in the center of the island. The bench descended sharply until I could see inside the building, but there was not much to see, only four empty gray walls and a few of the purple clouds that represented “the Enlightened”, as Eve called them.

“When I went to one such refuge, I was told that I needed to utilize the great gift I had been given via Transformation. There was so much out in the universe, so much for me to see and know, an inexhaustible supply of wisdom to discover if only I chose to find it. I took the counselor’s words to heart and joined the Discovery Corps.”

The bench jolted upwards, once more streaking across the vast oceans until it reached an archipelago of flat islands that seemed too perfect to have formed naturally. On the center-most of the five islands I could see a cluster of tiny objects like Eve’s ship. “The Discovery Corps was to be the crowning achievement of Enlightened society, a group of explorers who would travel the universe, learning all of its secrets. Being nearly immortal, they could venture forever without having to fear old age or lack of supplies.”

“The ships were necessary to protect the explorers from anything that they should encounter. Each ship had the ability to travel faster than the speed of light, skipping across the universe like a stone across a pond, jumping from one star to the next. The hulls were believed to be impenetrable, able to fly into the heart of a star if the explorer so chose. The ships were very low-maintenance, requiring only to recharge for a few minutes after every jump.”

“There was only one flaw in the design of the ships. Since an actual computer would require too much maintenance for long-term exploration, the ship’s systems were powered by each explorer’s essence. The ship and explorer became one, the ship’s systems merely the extension of the Discovery Corps explorer’s own senses. This symbiosis allowed for more efficiency and less maintenance, but it rendered the ship completely useless should the explorer ever wish to venture outside of the craft in a physical form. It was still possible to leave the ship in the Enlightened state, but if the Explorer chose to return to their physical body, there was no way for them to become Enlightened again without the aid of another Sohebian.”

“Each Discovery Corps explorer was given a vector and told to follow it as long as they were able to. The explorers would all be sent on different paths to cover as much of the galaxy as possible. After a brief orientation course in the sciences and military strategy, the explorers went to their ships and launched into space.” Eve stopped, tears coming to her eyes. “That launch was the last time I ever saw another of my people.”

I reached out to put a hand on Eve’s shoulder, but she brushed it away. The bench hurdled through space, finally stopping at an orange star similar in size to the Sun. “It took over a thousand years to reach this system, through dozens of barren solar systems, but I finally found intelligent life. During my trip here I felt so homesick and alone that I was tempted to go back home, but I forced myself to continue at least until I found life to study.”

The scene abruptly changed so that I was looking down on a brown world. “This planet I designated the First, a name that lasted for one hundred thousand years, until its inhabitants had a common language that labeled the planet as Atrml.” The bench descended beneath the clouds until I could see the Atrmlians below me. They were short, stocky, four-legged creatures with thick black fur that almost hid the arms and head protruding from their bodies. I watched them clumsily walk about, sometimes breaking into a run to hunt down an animal or to fight some other member of their species. “I watched from orbit as these primitive hunter-gatherers developed into a highly advanced society.” Everything below was suddenly going by at almost the speed of light, I watched bloody wars fought in a heartbeat, babies become elderly in seconds, empires that lasted for scant minutes, towns become metropolises then revert back to towns in only an hour. It was an entire one hundred thousand year history compacted into the space of about one hour. The end result was a planet at the edge of disaster from massive pollution and overcrowding, but that nevertheless was nearly as advanced as Earth. “It was here that the Atrmlians began to launch their own spacecraft, which forced me to retreat further back into the system to watch their last centuries.”

While Eve may have drawn back further into the system in real life, the bench remained stationary. The Atrmlians continued to grow and develop for another few minutes, then I watched the apocalypse unfold. It started with a vicious war fought across the planet, even in space by killer satellites, but it soon ended in a cascade of nuclear explosions that eclipsed the entire world from my view for a moment. When I could see the planet again, it was reduced to a lifeless cinder in space, its forests leveled, skies poisoned, and oceans boiled away. Nothing, not even animal life, was left on Atrml.

Everything went black, Eve turning to me, her face pained from the memories. “I had spent one hundred thousand years watching the Atrmlians grow and prosper, they were, in a way, like family to me. When I watched them die, the emptiness I had felt before was magnified by a thousand times. I wanted to die too, but I told myself that I had to press on, to learn more that might help the Enlightened when I returned home. It was another ten thousand years before I found a second inhabited planet.”

An emerald world appeared below me, the bench dropping down to show a tropical planet teeming with life. I couldn’t see anything that would qualify as intelligent life, but a second later I saw a little village constructed in some of the planet’s huge trees. The creatures building the village were called the Estrepe according to Eve, but I couldn’t help but think of the lemurs I had seen in the zoo when I was a kid. Time unfolded quickly below, until the tiny village was spreading through the length of the forest. “I stayed for only ten thousand years at Estrepe, they never advanced beyond using tools made of wood and bone. Over the next one hundred thousand years every world I visited was similar, none could ever become an advanced civilization technologically.” A dozen different planets flashed past, I watched as each culture rose and fell and rose again in minutes. Some of the civilizations were limited by geography, like the tree-dwelling Estrepe and a race on a planet entirely covered in ocean. Others just never seemed to evolve to that state of higher intelligence where they could master creating the tools necessary to advance themselves. I started to think of Earth and how lucky I was that humans had managed to avoid being trapped in such developmental cul-de-sacs.

I was also starting to get a sense of Eve’s loneliness and pain. She was out in space, completely alone, watching societies grow and die, yet she could never be a part of them. She was always an observer, an outsider, she spent thousands of years without anyone being able to tell her they loved her or they needed her. She had been a naïve young woman fed to the cold cruelty of the universe, yet still she felt the need to continue so that what she learned might someday benefit her people.

The bench finally brought us to a red-brown planet inhabited by insect creatures that looked similar to giant red ants. “The Zinfedur were the most advanced race I had ever encountered, their technology rivaled Sohebians before The Discovery.” Almost like Earth ants, the Zinfedur lived in cities surrounded by great sloping walls, walls that turned from packed dirt to stone, to metal, finally to invisible energy shields. As Eve said, they were nearly as advanced as the Sohebians technologically, and ahead of Earth by a few centuries. “After sixty thousand years I was forced deeper into the system to avoid detection. Over the next two hundred thousand years I continued to move farther and farther away as the Zinfedur Empire grew.”

Enormous starships passed by the bench, and although I couldn’t be sure, they looked like they were crammed full of weapons. Eve looked away, but when she finally turned towards me, I could see a deep sadness in her eyes. “Unlike my people, who remained peaceful, the Zinfedur were bent on conquest. Many of the civilizations I encountered were invaded and enslaved by the Zinfedur as their empire swelled from one system to another. All during this time, as innocents died, I sat by and watched, unable to do anything to stop the Zinfedur advance. There was simply no way that I could stop them all alone. I’m still ashamed that I did nothing to help, maybe with my ship I could have at least slowed their advance, dulled their progress. Instead, I merely observed, until finally the sheer size of the Zinfedur Empire became its undoing. It slowly collapsed upon itself, leaving worlds in complete ruins. Some planets were completely ravaged like Atrml, worlds where no life would ever again grow, while others reverted back to more primitive existences, and a tiny handful actually rose to become small empires of their own.” All during this time the world around me was black, as though Eve were too ashamed to even show me the destruction caused by the Zinfedur while she had silently remained neutral.

Finally, the bench continued its journey until we stopped at a lonely, desolate star system composed of three lifeless worlds. “This is where I finally stopped, at the edge of the galaxy. It had been four hundred thousand years since my journey began, now I decided that I would go home and give my people all that I learned.”

Sohebia flashed back into view, but it was vastly different than before. The cities were almost completely gone, just piles of rubble buried by forest overgrowth. I couldn’t see even a trace of any purple streaks that would mark an Enlightened Sohebian. “What happened?” I asked. I could see that Eve was crying openly now, the pain becoming too much for her.

“They were gone, all of them!” She burst out. “I searched the entire planet for centuries, but there was no trace of any of my people or where they had gone. There was not even a sign of any who chose not to become Enlightened, my entire civilization had just vanished!” The bench started to whip around like it was in the middle of a tornado, showing me the entire planet. The usual animal and plant life still existed, but there was no sign of any Sohebians, Enlightened or otherwise. “I looked through the rubble, I tried to get old computer systems working, I examined plants and animals for any signs of ecological changes, but there was no explanation for the disappearance. Whether my people had been killed, fled, or simply took the next step in evolution, the end result was that I was alone, completely and totally alone.”

The bench came to a stop on a hill overlooking what had once been the city where Eve had grown up, she simply stared at the ruins for a long time before continuing. “I remained here for a thousand years, hoping that one of the other ships would come back, but there was nothing. I thought of extracting my physical matter, living out my final years here, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know why I couldn’t end my own life, maybe it was just fear, or Fate, or the slim hope that I might be able to find another of my kind, so instead of suicide, I headed back into space.”

Eve stopped, the familiar scene of Kingfisher Bluffs returning once again. I could see that she was wrestling with some kind of decision, something she wanted to tell me but didn’t know how to put it into words. I briefly considered asking her directly, but decided against it. Whatever she had to say would come in time, there was no need to rush things. Finally, Eve turned to me, holding out her left hand to me. “Take my hand, there’s something I want to show you,” she said quietly.

I hesitated, it seemed a little risky to blindly do what an alien of her obvious power said, but with a sigh I knew I had no choice. I was trapped in her ship, she could keep me here as long as she liked until I finally did what she wanted anyway. I took her hands, a surge of energy running through my body, filling every pore of my body with pain. “What have you done?” I bit out through clenched teeth.

“I need you to not only see what I saw, but to feel what I felt, then you will understand,” Eve replied quietly. I could see her entire body starting to turn a translucent purple, until all that remained of her was a violet mist enveloping me. The pain became more intense, it was almost like when I had entered Eve’s ship, my body felt as though it were being taken apart molecule by molecule. There was one final surge of torment, then everything was silent, the world around me having disappeared completely.

There was a flash of blue light, a planetary system coming into view. A hazy green image of an elliptical appeared just to my left, a tiny red dot flashing at the very edge of the galaxy. I knew now that I was seeing through Eve’s eyes from inside of her ship. There was no English description for the galaxy indicated by the map, no way to tell where exactly in the universe I was, but I suspected that it was very far away. I heard Eve’s voice whisper in my ear, “I searched the galaxy for three hundred thousand years for any of the other Discovery Corps explorers, but I could not find any of them. I was lost, alone at the edge of the galaxy with no idea what to do next.”

A very familiar feeling came over me, the emotional cocktail of sorrow, helplessness, and anger that I had felt after my family had been killed. In Eve’s case it was magnified a thousand times, she had lost not only her family, but also her entire race. They had simply disappeared, abandoning her to the wilds of space, to travel alone forever. The only options to permanent isolation were suicide or to find a companion, someone she could share her journey with.

The decision was made in a heartbeat. As powerful as the emotions running through Eve were, they could not persuade her to end her life, not yet. She would at least try to find a companion, try to find someone who could fill the emptiness that had been plaguing her, to make her whole again. My vision suddenly filled with orange depictions of various galaxies, all of varying shapes and sizes. Any of the twenty or so galaxies were within reach of the Sohebian ship, although the tiny vessel’s power reserves would be completely depleted, which would leave Eve vulnerable for a few hours.

The galaxies disappeared, each reappearing one at a time so that Eve could review the galaxy’s characteristics. About halfway through the list was a spiral galaxy very similar to my own Milky Way galaxy, but of course without some kind of English translation for the Sohebian characters there was no way to be sure. Before I knew it the decision was made, the ship was preparing to jump to the spiral galaxy that could possibly be the Milky Way. “You are correct in thinking that I chose your home galaxy. From the parameters presented, I believed it would have the highest concentration of life, which would give me the best chance for success,” Eve hissed in my ear.

There was another flash of blue and suddenly the universe disappeared. Moments later I was surrounded by a desolate red giant star system. There were no maps, nothing to tell me where I was, the ship was dead in space, slowly corkscrewing towards the star while the vessel’s systems recharged. “The jump was successful, but I was left to float in space for hours to contemplate my decision. I could always go back, but I knew there was now nothing to go back to. I had been abandoned, an orphan left to wander the universe, yearning for any kind of contact.”

Eve let me just float in space for what felt like forever, until I could begin to truly appreciate what she was going through. It had been a million years without touching another living being, without talking to anyone, without feeling loved or included, without any of the experiences that make one feel truly alive. For all of Eve’s power, for all of her ship’s advanced technology, she was little more than a vagabond in search of a home. She was…just like me.

It took a few long moments to put all of the pieces together, but the realization hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. We were both wandering space in search of something, in search of that elusive thing that would make our spirits complete once again. The difference, though, was that while Eve had not necessarily chosen to be outcast from her society, I had willingly shut myself off for all of those long months after Becky and Steve had been killed, and even after that I fled from the center of human society, choosing to lurk at the edges in sleazy bars and motels. Eve was an outcast by fate, I was an outcast by design, which in many ways made my own plight seem more tragic.

I was starting to understand that if we were two souls each missing a piece, perhaps together we could make each other whole. We were both so lonely, so empty inside, so in need of another person who understood our feelings. Maybe everything in the past few days had been arranged by the higher powers so that Eve and I could be brought together, so that we could both truly live again. And yet, even as I could feel my love for Eve beginning to grow, there were dark rumblings at the edge of my mind.

As much as I was starting to love her, and as much as we our stories were similar, I could not forget what she had done. She had kidnapped me, analyzed me, and then tried to create an illusion of the afterlife to keep me from finding out what she really was. Most unforgivable of all, she had masqueraded as Becky, the woman who had been everything to me. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” I asked, my mind torn between love and hatred. The question seemed to echo into infinity, across space and time, the force of my words tearing apart the universe around me until there was nothing but empty blackness.

“I was desperate, I couldn’t take the chance that you would leave like the others!” Eve shouted back.

“Others? What others?” Even as I finished the question, a barrage of images and emotions were flowing through me. I saw images of Eve’s ship revealing itself to various beings, allowing them to be absorbed in the same manner as I had. None of them, though, could handle the transition to a noncorporeal state, their minds were too warped by fear. I could feel their terror, hear their screams as they tried in vain to find some way out, some way to escape from the nightmare they had suddenly been plunged into. I felt something else as well, the loss and sadness Eve felt each time she failed, each time she was immersed back into her lonely prison.

I was suddenly overcome with pain as Eve wrenched herself away from me. Slowly, the Kingfisher Bluffs illusion came back, Eve waiting for me on the bench. I sat next to her, looking into her tear-filled eyes. “It seemed like good fortune when I miscalculated the jump into your system and crashed into that freighter, because it brought you to me. I knew the moment you entered my ship that I could not fail again. I could not bear to lose you the way I had all the others. I thought if I recreated a scene from your life when you were most at peace I would be able to keep you here forever.”

“You wanted to make me your willing prisoner? That’s monstrous!” I shouted, jumping up from the bench.

“No, it isn’t like that!”

“Then what is it like?”

“I…I love you!” She sobbed. My words were trapped in my mouth as I simply stood and stared at her. I wanted to reach out, to touch her, to comfort her, but I held back, still unable to forgive her. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it, so I ran instead. I ran until I could no longer hear her voice pleading for me to come back. I ran until I couldn’t see anymore from the tears in my eyes. Finally, I threw myself onto the ground, hearing only the waves pounding the shore and my own sobs.

I wanted to love her, I wanted to be with her, but how could I trust her after she had already once tried to deceive me? There was no way that I could truly understand how powerful Eve was, maybe everything she had shown, all the things that I had felt when she allowed me to experience her memories, was just another illusion designed to do what her first could not. Maybe her confession of love was just another lie, another way to convince me to stay.

I regained control of myself enough to stumble to the edge of the bluffs, staring out at the ocean as I had done so long ago when I had another important decision to make about whom to spend my life with. I could live with Eve forever or I could go back to my lonely world. I started to laugh, the choice seemed so obvious that I felt like a fool. Even if Eve was lying, what was there possibly waiting for me back in the real world? Palmer had taken my ship, killed my crew, and would probably kill me once I reappeared.

Palmer. I had almost forgotten about him, my mind so consumed with Eve and her story. He was still out there, still going forward with whatever his plan was for Eve’s ship. He had killed Gill and the Yellowknife crew, and once he found out that Sirvenski had saved me, Palmer would probably kill Sirvenski as well. He had to be stopped, he had to be brought to justice for his crimes, and I was the only one who could stop him.

So all the emotions, all the thoughts, all the tears were for nothing. There was only one decision that could be made for now. Later, if I was able to stop Palmer, then I would have to decide about my future with Eve. I slowly walked back to the bench and found that Eve had composed herself, looking out over the sea the same as I had been doing. “Can your ship free itself from the Yellowknife?” I asked, sitting down next to Eve and carefully avoiding her eyes.

“No, the jump into the system depleted the power for the engines, it would need several minutes of solar energy to recharge.”

“There’s a man that has dark plans for your ship. He’s already killed six people just to take possession of your ship, who knows how many more will die before he accomplishes his goal.” I stopped, willing myself to spit out the last part, the part that could take Eve away from me forever. “I need you to let me go so that I can stop him.”

“There’s no way that he can hurt this ship, we’ll be safe in here…”

“That doesn’t matter! There is more at stake than the two of us! I have an obligation to make things right for those people that he’s killed!” I forced calm back into my voice, seeing how visibly upset she was at my outburst. “Please, I don’t…I don’t want to leave you, but I have to.”

Eve stood, taking my hand and pressing up close to my body. She kissed me, but unlike the last time when she had been impersonating Becky, this felt right. I returned her kiss, all of our problems consumed by our passion. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she slipped away from my grasp, whispering, “I understand. Return to me if you can.”

Before I could say anything, Eve and everything else vanished, leaving only raw pain as my body was reassembled cell-by-cell. My eyes opened and I found myself standing in the Yellowknife’s cargo bay, the familiar sounds of Kingfisher Bluffs replaced with cold silence. It was a silence shattered by the sound of a pistol firing. I felt pain lance through my left knee, then collapsed to the deck, hearing the even more familiar sound of Palmer’s mocking laughter.

Chapter Six

2007-06-12T13:31:00.001-07:00

Chapter Six

My eyes slowly fluttered open, squinting against the sudden brightness. For a moment I just stared up, up at red-tinged clouds floating through the orange-red sky. I must be dead, I thought, the sound of waves crashing into the shore loud in my ears. The last thing I remembered was touching the alien object, then my body disintegrating in the light from the object.

Belatedly, the thought came to me that if I was dead, then this must be the afterlife. I started to laugh almost insanely, until tears came to my eyes and I felt a dull ache in my stomach. All those years of wishing and hoping for death to finally come, and now here I was, dead as a doornail, lying on the soft ground, staring up at a gorgeous sky. It felt better than I had ever imagined it could. I moved my fingers and feet experimentally, the appendages flexing normally. With a groan I pushed myself to unsteady feet, wobbling about drunkenly as I took in my surroundings.

I was standing on a high bluff overlooking the steel-gray waters of the Atlantic Ocean, white-capped waves pounding against the sharp rocks below. Pale green grass wavered in the cool breeze, filling my nostrils with its sweet smell. I followed the gentle curve of the bluff with my eyes until I saw the solitary lighthouse rising majestically into the dawn sky. It was a beautiful sight, the most beautiful that I had ever seen. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, sitting at the edge of the bluff, my legs dangling over the edge as I looked out over the ocean.

If there was such a thing as a perfect moment, this was it. I felt so completely at peace, even the thought of my own death held no fear. All my worries, my cares, receded like the tide of the great ocean below. I just sat there, staring at the water, for hours, yet the sun never moved higher into the sky.

After a great while I stood up, walking towards nothing in particular, my hands skimming through the tall grass as I went. There was an old dirt path worn into the grass about a hundred meters from the edge of the bluff, a path that led up to the old lighthouse. Sitting just a few feet off the path in a patch of low grass was a battered red pick-up truck, a truck my father had given me for my eighteenth birthday. The path in the grass, it went from the lighthouse all the way back to the little coastal town of Waterford, Maine, where I’d grown up.

I climbed into the truck’s driver’s seat, the controls just as I remembered them. Even when I was growing up, transit tubes connected most cities to each other, but far-flung towns like Waterford didn’t warrant the expense of building transit tubes, there were too few people, so ordinary cars and trucks were still the norm. Besides, you had to use a car to get to places like Kingfisher Bluffs, places where not even a real road had ever been built, just a path of beaten-down dirt from the vehicles that passed through. The memories made me realize just how long it had been since I’d gone back home. It was probably because my parents had died almost ten years ago, and most of my old friends had left town for more exciting places. A part of me always wished that I’d never left Waterford, if I hadn’t then not only would I probably still be alive, but Becky and Steve as well.

I leaned back in my seat, and it was only then that I took a look in the mirror. With a start, I saw a face long-forgotten, a face that had once been my own. The thick brown hair that never quite seemed to sit down, the blue eyes that were a little too blue from enhancement surgery, the lean build that had not quite filled out yet, this was how I’d looked when I was twenty-three years old. That realization brought forth a revelation that this was not some ordinary day I was reliving, this was the most important, most special day of my life. It was the day I had finally asked Becky to marry me.

It was a day I could still remember as though it had happened just yesterday. I had come by Becky’s house before dawn and crept back to her bedroom window, which was thankfully on the first floor of the old white farmhouse where she still lived with her parents. I rapped gently on the window, waiting nervously in the bushes and hoping that no one saw me. I waited almost five minutes, reaching up to tap on the window again, when a hand touched my shoulder. Before I could shout in surprise, I felt a soft finger against my lips. Becky leaned down with a look of great satisfaction on her lips. “That’ll teach you for waking me up so early,” she teased quietly.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, my mind searching for the right words to say next. “I…I wanted to show you something.”

“It couldn’t have waited until a reasonable hour?”

I rubbed the back of my neck nervously, this was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. “Well, no. Come on.”

“Wait a second, I’m not really dressed to go anywhere,” Becky protested, motioning to the faded old nightgown and heavy sweater she’d slipped on. “At least let me change first.”

“Um, all right,” I stammered.

“Just wait in the truck, I’ll be right out,” Becky whispered before she disappeared back around the side of the house. I clumsily got to my feet and made my way back to the truck, trying to shut the door as quietly as I could so as to not wake up Becky’s family or any of the neighbors. I sat in the truck for a couple of minutes, silently cursing myself for being so stupid. The least I could have done was to have given Becky some kind of warning before I sprung this on her. Even though it wasn’t light yet I couldn’t expect her to go out looking like she’d just woke up. I muttered another curse under my breath, then reached into the inside pocket of my coat, pulling out a small velvet box.

I opened the box, feeling my resolve harden as I stared at the engagement ring inside. The ring had cost me a small fortune, but now that I’d graduated college and found a job as a junior accountant for Kovalchuk, Spezza, and Weiss, I could not only afford the ring, but the down payment of a house for Becky and I, if she said yes. I hoped with all the fiber of my being that she said yes, if she didn’t, then I’d be crushed forever. The two of us had been going out for three years, which felt like long enough for me, but I couldn’t be certain that Becky was ready to move to the next step. Maybe I was going too fast, maybe she would want more time, or maybe she didn’t even really want to get married at all. Snapping the velvet case shut, I stuffed it back into my pocket while I nervously waited in the truck, my palms starting to sweat even though it was little more than fifty degrees outside.

At last I saw Becky open the door and it felt like someone had slapped me in the face. Even in the dim light she was so beautiful, even with a minimal amount of make-up and preparation she still looked like the goddess I had fallen in love with three years earlier at the University of Maine. “Are we going or are you just going to stare all day?” She teased, making me aware of how stupid I must look with my mouth hanging open like some love-struck teenager.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I replied clumsily, starting up the truck’s engine. It took about ten minutes to get to Kingfisher Bluffs, during which time we kept the conversation light, talking about family affairs, sports, news, nothing serious enough to force me to have to think too much. My mind was too focused on what I would say when the time came, picturing various scenarios and how Becky might react. Some of those scenarios were none too pleasant, I just had to hope that she felt as strongly as I did.

At last we arrived at the bluffs, I parked the car off to the side and stared dumbly at her for a few moments. “Is something wrong?” She asked.

“No, I…I just need a couple of minutes,” I blurted out, cursing my stupidity again. I wanted to tell her, I really did, but when I tried, I just couldn’t force the words out. Maybe a few minutes to collect myself would give me the courage I needed.

“All right, I’ll be over there,” Becky pointed to a wooden bench in a cluster of grass off to the right. She gave me a wink as she left, hugging herself tightly against the cold while she made her way over to the bench to wait. Maybe she already knows, I thought to myself. In which case, the wink was probably a good sign that she wanted me to ask. Still, I felt a cold pit in my stomach, nervousness clawing at me.

I took a quick look in the mirror of the truck, trying to get my unruly hair to sit, but it resisted stubbornly as it always did. I sighed, my head down and hands in my pockets as I trudged to the edge of the bluff, just out of sight of Becky, to stare out at the water that was as gray as the dim predawn sky. I could see lights twinkling in the distance from various fishing boats already hard at work on this chilly summer morning. For a long while I just sat and stared, trying to overcome my fear.

What the hell was wrong with me? I wondered. Becky was everything I’d ever wanted: smart, beautiful, and as sweet as anyone I’d known. I thought back to when we had first met. It was the biggest game of the year for the University of Maine hockey team, the game that would determine if the team would make the playoffs or not. Not that I’d given a damn, I was no hockey fan, but my roommate had coerced me into going down to Kariya Stadium that night, and I was very fortunate he did, for sitting next to me was an angel. It turned out that Becky was no hockey fan either, like me she had been talked into going, so the two of us sat and watched the game together, neither of us really understanding what was going on. So, at second intermission we had snuck out of the game, going back to my dorm room and talking long into the night. When my roommate finally stumbled in drunkenly, he had been celebrating the team’s victory with some friends of his long after the game was over, Becky and I went into town to a little coffee shop, continuing to talk like we had known each other forever. It turned out that we had grown up in the same town, but had never really gotten to know each other until now, even though we had many common friends and acquaintances back in Waterford. After that night, we had been almost inseparable outside of classes, even coming home for holidays together. There were no hitches in the progression of our relationship, our families approved of our relationship, and there were no loose ends or skeletons in the closet to haunt us.

There had been a few disagreements over the past three years, but our love had only grown. The only real problem had cropped up shortly after graduation three weeks ago. I had gotten a Bachelor’s Degree in accounting and was ready to go to work for Kovalchuk, Spezza, and Weiss in Chicago, while Becky wanted to go to medical school and become a doctor. It was very likely that we would have to part ways for a little while, maybe even years until she finished medical school. That’s what had led me to finally buy a ring and plan for this moment, to prove to her how committed I was, so that if we did have to be separated, she wouldn’t have to worry about me being faithful to her. That thought quashed the fear that I had been feeling, replacing it with new determination. It was time to prove my love to Becky.

The sun was just starting to come up over the water, the dull gray sky fading to vibrant shades of orange and red. The wind was picking up a little, a cold breeze that seemed to chew through my jacket right down to my bones, but I paid it little attention. There was only one thing on my mind, one person who had become the center of the universe over the last three years. Nothing else mattered, except to tell her how much I loved her and wanted to be with her always.

Becky must have seen me coming, for she had gotten up from the bench, turning to face me. I almost stopped in my tracks just gazing at her loveliness. The rising sun shining behind her, her long black hair gently blowing in the breeze, her slightly freckled face lighting up as she watched me approach, her soft hands reaching out to take mine, it was all like some beautiful dream. I looked deeply into her brown eyes, seeing in them the reflection of all the love I felt for her. The awkwardness, the fear I had felt, evaporated as I got down on one knee in the soft, cool earth.

“Becky, I’ve loved you for as long as I’ve known you, and now that we may lose each other for a little while, I realize that I never want to be apart from you. I want us to be together forever, but if we can’t, then at least we can have a constant reminder of our love.” I stopped, pulling the velvet box from my pocket and cracking it open. “Rebecca Marshall, will you marry me?”

For a moment there was no sound except for the rhythmic beat of the ocean and the distant call of a seagull. Finally, Becky reached into the box, slipping the ring onto her finger. She leaned down, throwing her arms around me and forcing me to fall onto my back with her on top of me. We kissed passionately for what seemed like forever, our bodies seemingly joined as one. Becky eventually climbed off of me, brushing a sweep of hair from her face before helping me up to my feet. She looked into my eyes and smiled, “Of course I’ll marry you, Brent. And, I’ve got great news for you. I was going to surprise you with it tonight, but I guess now is just as good.” She led me over to the bench, where I sat down and wondered what this great news could possibly be.

“What is it?” I asked nervously.

“I’ve been accepted to the University of Chicago medical school. So we’ll both be able to move to Chicago.”

Inside I was ecstatic, but also a little concerned. What if she had given up going to a better school just to be with me? “Look, I’m really glad, but if you sacrificed…”

“I didn’t sacrifice anything,” she interrupted, an edge of harshness in her voice. “It’s not the best medical school in the world, but it is a good program, and we’ll be able to find a place and start our new life together.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” I whispered, leaning over to kiss her again. We tumbled off of the bench into the grass, giggling like children we collapsed into each other’s arms. My hands expertly undid the buttons of her shirt, fumbling for an instant with her bra as I felt her hands gently pulling off my pants. Our bodies came together with the effortlessness caused by much practice, our nakedness concealed by the tall grasses. Even after we were spent, we lay silently in the grass, our sweaty bodies entangled with one another. My mind, after all of its nervousness earlier, felt free and relaxed. The threat of losing Becky forever no longer loomed over me.

We spent the rest of the day on the bluffs, planning our future together. We talked about having children, but only after she was through medical school and our careers could afford for us to make time to raise a child. We talked about the house where we would live, but until we could afford one, we would settle for an apartment in Chicago. We talked of our hopes and dreams, but no longer as individuals, our dreams were now intertwined. We talked of other things until the sun set behind us and the blue moonlight shone down on our bench. It would be another year before we returned to the bluffs, to that little bench in the grass. Our wedding was held on Kingfisher Bluffs, against the rising sun in honor of that day on the bluffs when an awkward young man finally found the courage to express his love.

My mind snapped back to the present, I turned away from the mirror and got out of the truck. If this was truly that day, then she must be here. If this was Heaven then Becky would be on the little wooden bench waiting for me, but if it were Hell then she would have long since gone, leaving me to contemplate my loneliness for all time. Almost reluctantly, I headed away from the truck, down towards where I knew the bench was, where hopefully Becky was waiting for me.

My clumsy strides turned longer and longer, until I was running through the grass, my heart racing in my ears. Oh please, let her be here, I thought furiously. It’s been so long since I held her in my arms, since I ran my fingers through her hair, since I caressed her soft skin, since I said how much I loved her. Give me just one last time, one last glimpse of her even, then I wouldn’t care what happened next. I stopped suddenly in my tracks, my fondest wish fulfilled.

She stood just as I had remembered from that long-ago day, more beautiful than even in my dreams. There was a moment when my legs refused to move, I was just so overcome with emotion that I couldn’t do anything except stare. Finally, my joy relented enough that I could run towards her, my feet seeming to become airborne, my soul flying towards her like a leaf on the wind.

There were no words when I reached her, I simply took her in my arms, my fingers brushing against her flesh to make sure that this was no illusion. I could feel the warmth of her body through her clothes, I could smell the sweet perfume in her hair, I could see the love in her eyes. After all these years, we were together once again, this time for all eternity. I cupped her chin delicately with one hand, my lips slowly coming to hers.

I shoved her abruptly away from me, a shiver suddenly running through me. Something, something in the kiss was not right. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it was not the same, it was almost as if I were kissing a stranger. “Who the hell are you?” I demanded angrily.

Chapter Five

2007-06-12T13:30:00.001-07:00

Chapter Five

I was fortunate that Palmer didn’t kill me right away. There was still only seven of us and quite a bit of work to be done, so I was spared, at least temporarily. Of course, at the time it was hard to see it as good fortune, it felt more like the opposite, like Fate was just toying with me by delaying the inevitable. Even with those dark thoughts in my head, part of me kept hoping for some window of opportunity to escape through.

It was going to be hard to escape, though, when I was in a spacesuit outside the Yellowknife with two of the damaged hauler’s crewmembers keeping me company. Worse yet, the Poseyville had disengaged from the Yellowknife, so it was floating some four hundred meters away from the other hauler while the repairs took place. The boxy repair robots were already in place to begin patching the hull once the three of us maneuvered the replacement hull plating into place. It was relatively easy to carry the plates in zero-g, but they were still awkward to get into position. After almost an hour, though, we were finally ready to get started.

“It took you long enough,” Palmer sneered into my suit’s headset.

“Yeah, if you don’t like it, why don’t you come out and do it yourself,” I grumbled, mostly to myself. I thought maybe one of the Yellowknife crewmembers with me, Robertsson or Hauer, would make some comment to keep me in line, but they both seemed to agree with me. Apparently no one liked Palmer, which was something that I might be able to use to my advantage.

“Just get the job done,” Parker barked sharply. Robertsson and Hauer motioned for me to help them activate the robots, then we floated back to a safe distance to supervise the repairs. For three hours we watched, the only interruption when I had to go in and adjust one of the hull plates for the robotic arms to grip. The repair robots were just an anvil-shaped body with four spindly arms and protruding antennae, they were designed for cost effectiveness, not intelligence. Robertsson and Hauer kept a watchful eye on me all the time, the small knives sheathed on the left legs of their suits more than enough to puncture my suit and kill me, should it come to that.

Finally, the robots finished the task, welding the plating into place, which would hopefully be strong enough to keep the damage sealed until more permanent repairs could be made. The three of us moved in to deactivate the robots and guide them back to the Poseyville, when Palmer’s voice came over the radio, more arrogant than ever. “Thank-you for your help gentlemen, now it’s time to collect your reward.”

“What the hell are you talking…” Robertsson began, but was interrupted when one of the robots suddenly came back to life, the welding torch in its hand searing through Robertsson’s suit, depressurizing it.

“What the hell are you doing?” I heard Parker shout.

“Taking care of loose ends,” Palmer responded.

“Brian, no!” I shouted, but it was too late. I heard three shots ring out, then there was silence. “No!” I screamed, thinking of Sirvenski lying on the deck of the Poseyville, blood gushing from wherever he had been shot. There was no more time for gruesome imagery, the repair robots were turning towards Hauer and I.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Hauer screamed, scrambling madly for the airlock. I followed closely behind him, keeping close to the Yellowknife’s hull to use it to push myself along with. The repair robots were slow, they had never been designed for hunting down humans, they were still a couple hundred meters away when Hauer and I reached the airlock. Hauer hit the button to open the door, but nothing happened. “Shit!” He cursed, looking for the manual override. He finally located a panel to the left of the door, but nothing happened when he pulled down the override handle.

“Sorry boys, but I took the precaution of sabotaging the airlock,” Palmer said smugly.

“Damn it Brian, why are you doing this?” I shouted into my headset as Hauer looked for some way to open the airlock.

Palmer laughed, almost the same way Pettyjohn had laughed when I had cornered her in the Poseyville’s cargo bay. “Why? Did you really think I was going to split all the money I’m going to make with all of you?”

“Money? That’s it? You killed four people just for money?”

“Well, six actually, if you count Gill and Pettyjohn.”

I froze for a moment, my mind thinking back to that night on the customs station over Mars. Palmer had found Murray Gill’s body and told me what happened, I hadn’t questioned it at the time, but now it made sense. Gill must have sniffed out what Palmer was up to, so Palmer had killed him before Gill could tell me. I heard Palmer laugh again, but it was too late to make any kind of reply, the repair robots were getting close, they’d have us in a couple more seconds.

Hauer pushed away from the airlock, swimming towards the bridge. I took a look back at the charging robots, then pushed up, scrambling my way onto the top of the ship. I floated just over the hull for a moment, forcing myself to think. There had to be some way in, a way that Palmer hadn’t thought of. I looked over my suit for any tools I could use to pry the airlock open with, but there was nothing. “Gallowes, help me!” Hauer screamed.

“I’m coming!” I shouted back, trying to think of some kind of plan. I tried to think of everything I had ever heard or read about repair robots, but there wasn’t much I could remember, and what I could was of no use. There wasn’t an off switch or a way to safely reprogram the robots, not without access to a computer terminal.

Hauer was near the nose of the ship, trying to hide against the sensor cluster, the robots coming closer and closer, although I couldn’t tell if they had actually spotted Hauer yet. That got me to thinking about what the robots used for sight, as I recalled from a long-ago training course, it was primarily infrared. Rummaging through my suit I finally located a rescue flare, thanking God that Parker had not seen the flare as a deadly weapon. I keyed the flare for maximum brightness, then tossed it into the void, away from the Yellowknife and Poseyville. One of the robots turned towards the flare, then the others followed suit, drifting away from the haulers. I carefully made my way along the hull of the Yellowknife, helping Hauer to ease out of the sensor cluster and back up the nose of the ship. For a moment I considered trying to smash in the bridge screens, but the screens, while transparent, were not nearly as easy to break as actual glass, there would be no way to break them and keep my suit intact. Which left Hauer and I at a dead end.

“Is there any way we can pry open the patch on the hull?” I asked Hauer.

“Not a chance, the welds bond almost instantly, by now the patch is as solid as any other part of the ship,” Hauer replied sourly.

I looked around, the robots were still chasing after the flare, but it wouldn’t be much longer until the flare burned out or the robots caught it and realized that it was not their target. “What about the cargo bay doors? Could we get those open?”

Hauer shook his head, “Parker was the only one with the outside access codes.”

“We have to try to get to the Poseyville’s airlock, then. No way Palmer disabled his own door.”

Hauer nodded awkwardly with his suit’s helmet, following me as I began to swim across the distance between the two haulers. I fired the maneuvering jets sparingly, hoping that I didn’t attract any unwanted attention. About halfway across, the flare finally burned out, the robots stopping in surprise, then floating motionless for almost a minute. I urged Hauer to go faster, knowing that it wouldn’t be much longer until the robots found us and resumed the chase. “Do you have a flare?” I asked Hauer.

“Yeah, I think so,” Hauer answered, reaching into one of his pockets to withdraw a rescue flare. “What should I do with it?”

“Set it for maximum brightness, then throw it towards the Yellowknife.” Hauer nodded, doing his best to hurl the flare as far away from us as possible in zero-g. The robots almost instantly keyed on the flare, drifting back towards the Yellowknife for another wild goose chase. Meanwhile, Hauer and I swam the remaining distance to the Poseyville, reaching its airlock at almost the same time the second flare burned out.

I tried to key the airlock to open, but nothing happened. Cursing under my breath, I located the manual release and pulled down the lever with all of my strength. Again, nothing happened. Hauer and I were left staring at the door while the robots were searching about for us once again. Then, over my headset, I heard all-too-familiar laughter. “Nice try, Gallowes, but it won’t do you any good,” Palmer hissed. “I’ve disabled this airlock as well. It’s just you and your little metal buddies.”

“Oh shit!” Hauer groaned. “Now what?”

“The cargo bay doors,” I responded, climbing along the craggy hull to the top of the Poseyville. I made my way back to the outside controls for the cargo bay doors. Prying off the control box cover, I frantically typed in the entrance code, but as expected, nothing happened. I cursed under my breath, turning toward Hauer stoically. “You have anything besides that knife?”

Hauer fished in his pockets, finally pulling out a flat wrench about six inches long. “That’s all I got,” he said sheepishly.

“It’ll have to do.” We hunched down close to the cargo bay doors, waiting for the inevitable. “Maybe they’ll run out of fuel,” I ventured hopefully.

“Yeah, right,” Hauer snorted. We watched the robots silently as they headed for our position to finish what they had started by killing Robertsson. I was surprised that Palmer hadn’t come on the radio to gloat yet, but maybe he was waiting for the robots to actually find us then make sure his gloating was the last thing we ever heard. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the silence to think, to analyze just where everything had gone wrong.

It was hard to blame anyone but myself for this mess I was in. If I hadn’t been so busy drinking, popping pills, and feeling sorry for myself, maybe I would have noticed something on the customs station or at the mining station. I might have been able to stop Palmer before he double-crossed me, or I could have just gone to the authorities, let the professionals handle everything, but in my own arrogant way I decided to forge ahead by myself, because I was the only one who could make things right. It might not have been arrogance so much as a mistrust of professional law enforcement born from the grave of my wife, but at this point it didn’t matter, the robots were going to finish off Hauer and I, then Palmer would complete whatever his scheme was, leaving Sirvenski, the Yellowknife crew, and I to float endlessly through space forever.

The robots disappeared for a few moments, then bobbed over the top of the Poseyville’s hull, bearing down on Hauer and I. We pushed ourselves upright, standing side-by-side to face the end. It was hard to feel confident with nothing but a small wrench in my glove, but I tried to force the fear away and just think of surviving so that I could finally wipe the smile off Palmer’s face, repaying him for his treachery.

It would have been nice if the robots had stopped, if they had taken a few moments to size up their opponents to give Hauer and I more time to come up with some kind of strategy, but the robots just pressed ahead with their attack. I clumsily spun away to my right just as a welding torch cut past me, missing the fabric of my suit only by a few inches. I swung the wrench as hard as I could, but it had little effect on the hard casing of the robot’s body. One of the robot’s other arms, with a cutting torch at its end, whipped past me like a snake, but I reached out and grabbed hold of the arm before it could do any damage. I pried and twisted at the arm, finally breaking the appendage free, a small victory.

Hauer was similarly engaged with two other robots, slashing his knife to and fro to try and hack off the robots’ limbs. Using the arm I had pried loose and the wrench, I swatted at the two robots assaulting me, trying to keep their deadly arms away from my suit. It was only a matter of time, though, before something got through my guard.

For Hauer, that time was sooner rather than later. He spun to the left to avoid being grabbed by one of the robots’ grasping arms when a cutting tool sliced into his leg. He turned to look at me, a look of horror frozen on his face before his spacesuit depressurized. His final scream was cut off abruptly, blood spraying across his helmet’s faceshield to mask the last throes of his horrific death.

I immediately began to move backwards as quickly as I could to try and escape the four repair robots bearing down on me while Hauer’s corpse floated away from the Poseyville. I still only had a wrench to use against an enemy that could now easily surround me and finish me off. I was nearing the end of the Poseyville’s hull when I took a deep breath and stopped myself. There was no point in retreating any further, it was time for a last stand.

I threw the wrench aside, it was not going to be any good to me now, waiting for the robots to close the distance. It seemed that they took forever, my whole life flashing before my eyes once again. At least I would be reunited with my wife and son once again, providing I wasn’t cast into the fiery pit of Hell for all of my excesses in recent years. I had never been much of a religious man, but at that moment I started to pray not for salvation, but for mercy when my soul was finally released from my body. The robots drew closer, coolly bearing down on me as though I were just another task to be completed.

Finally, I surged ahead, throwing myself at the lead repair robot, grabbing all four of its arms then smashing it into the hull of the ship. The robot shattered, but the other three were upon me. I deflected a cutting tool, but a grasping arm snagged my arm, leaving one side of my body vulnerable to attack. A welding torch was about to tear into my suit, exposing it to space, when the three robots suddenly stopped. They just hung idly in space, the one still with part of my suit’s arm in its claw. “Brent?” I heard a weak voice ask over the radio.

“James? James, is that you?” I shouted excitedly.

“It’s me,” Sirvenski replied.

“I thought you were dead!”

“No…he just shot me in the leg. Look, I don’t know how long until Brian gets back. I’ll see if I can destroy these things, maybe I can order them to smash themselves into the ship or vent all their fuel.” The robot holding a piece of me suddenly let go, I checked my suit, but it appeared to still be intact.

“Thanks, James. Can you get the airlock open on the Yellowknife?”

“No, Palmer’s sabotaged it so that it won’t respond to any remote commands.”

“What about the cargo door?”

“I’ll try, but why do you want aboard the Yellowknife?”

“I want to find whatever it is that’s inside that ship and destroy it so even if we can’t take care of Palmer, at least he can’t win.” It probably wasn’t smart to say that over an empty channel, but there wasn’t much Palmer could do at that point. It would take him time to suit up and come after me, by then I could probably be inside the Yellowknife if Sirvenski could get it open.

“OK, I got it open, good luck Brent,” Sirvenski announced.

“You too, James.” I signed off, deactivating the radio. Chances were good that both Sirvenski and I would be dead very shortly, there would be no further need for communication. I began slowly making my way back towards the Yellowknife, with the grim determination of someone who knows that the end is near and doesn’t care. If I could just destroy whatever Palmer was after, then at least my death, and those of all the others Palmer had killed, would be worthwhile. I may never have been able to take my vengeance on my family’s killer, but I could get revenge on Brian Palmer for his multitude of crimes.

The cargo bay doors of the Yellowknife yawned open to reveal the empty, battered interior of the hold. I carefully descended to the deck, the doors closing shut above me. Unfortunately, without a proper airlock I still couldn’t take off my spacesuit, but I hardly noticed the suit’s added weight in the cargo hold’s gravity. There was only one thing on my mind and that was avenging all those Palmer had murdered for his own petty greed. I still didn’t know what I was looking for, but it was obvious once I moved away some rubble suspiciously piled in one corner of the cargo bay. Underneath the debris was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

It was almost like a gem, roughly spherical, but cut with octagonal facets, its color a translucent green that had a metallic sheen to it. The entire thing was three meters across and about as tall with no markings, no sensors, no communications relays, and no propulsion system visible. It was completely smooth, not showing any signs of damage from colliding with the Yellowknife’s hull. I slowly walked around the object, trying to find some kind of opening, but there was nothing visible.

My suit didn’t have any working sensors, so I couldn’t run an analysis of what the thing was made of, or if any openings might be visible that I couldn’t see with my naked eyes. Unfortunately, without an analysis of the object’s composition, I also wouldn’t be able to determine what kind of force would be necessary to destroy it. The only thing I could do was to try overloading the Yellowknife’s fusion generator and hope that the resulting blast was enough to take out the object. Of course, it would kill me, and would probably destroy the Poseyville as well, unless Palmer caught wind of my scheme in time to get the ship out of range. It was a chance I would have to take, there were no other options.

Before heading for the bridge to begin overloading the fusion reactor, I decided to try one last time to find some kind of opening in the object. I reached out with a gloved hand, softly touching the object’s surface, but before my hand could move away, I felt a jolt of electricity run through me. I tried to pull my hand back, but it was clamped down on the object, starting to glow red from the heat. An electric charge ran through my entire body, building with greater and greater intensity until I screamed from the pain. The object itself began to glow green, my eyes opening wide with disbelief as I watched the light grow brighter and brighter until it felt that I could take no more, yet I could not turn away. The light seemed to reach a climax, then the object pulsed three times, each pulse of light washing over my body. After the first pulse my spacesuit evaporated, my clothes with the second, and finally my body with the third. There was a strange, almost serene moment when I was nothing more than a disembodied mind floating freely in the light, but then I was sent hurtling through the object. After that, I knew nothing more.

Chapter Four

2007-06-12T13:29:00.002-07:00

Chapter Four

The trip through the asteroid belt took about five days, days spent in almost total silence. Occasionally one of us on the bridge would speak, but it was just some routine matter, after the incident in the cargo bay, none of us had the courage to discuss anything more than ship business. Even Palmer had lost his bluster, he flew the Poseyville without any jokes or cracks about my lack of piloting skill. We were all just running on remote control, our minds lost in the murky waters of dark thoughts.

If Pettyjohn’s death had told me anything, it was that I was in way over my head. I wasn’t a soldier, a spy, or a government agent, I was a former accountant and current hauler captain. I had seen my own share of corporate intrigue in my time, best friends turned to bitter rivals for the sake of gaining another rung on the corporate ladder, good people disgraced to save the job of a more senior partner, lives shattered to get just a little more money, but never had those corporate games turned to murder. Even the murder of my family had not been like this, it had been a random event, a stroke of colossal bad luck for my wife and son to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What was happening now, though, was different. It was cold, calculating murder for some prize, a prize I could not even begin to fathom. Whatever was on the Yellowknife, it was worth someone sending a professional killer to secure.

While Palmer steered through the asteroids, I read the file Sirvenski had downloaded on Lindsey Pettyjohn. The first thing I noticed was how different she looked from her last known picture to how I had seen her. The government file picture had been taken three years ago, but it showed a woman with short black hair, tan skin, brown eyes, with a trim, muscular build to her body. Obviously whoever had hired Pettyjohn had paid for some the complicated operations that would alter her physique enough to pass for Turgeon. Those kinds of surgeries were possible, but extremely costly, which meant Pettyjohn’s backer was someone with quite a bit of cash to throw around. Unfortunately, Sirvenski’s efforts to locate the benefactor of the Jovian Research Station had amounted to no solid leads. There were only maybe a dozen trillionaires in all of human space, but speculating on who might ultimately be behind everything did little good so far away from civilization.

There was little else in Pettyjohn’s file that was of immediate interest. Law enforcement agencies all across Earth had been after her, she was suspected in dozens of high-profile murders, but no one had ever been able to bring her to justice. Even her true identity, Lindsey Pettyjohn was only the name she used in business to identify herself, could not be determined. She was one of the most slippery characters around, yet somehow she had ended up on my ship, foiled by second-rate amateurs. On some level that made me feel better, if Palmer, Sirvenski, and I could take down this woman, maybe we could handle whatever else awaited us, but our survival was due mostly to good fortune, not skill. If Sirvenski had not gone after some wild hunch to bring up Pettyjohn’s file, if I had not found the real Turgeon’s body, if Palmer had not been in the cargo bay, everything would have turned out differently. We would either be dead right now or heading into the trap Pettyjohn had planned. A trap we could still be walking into, but at least now we knew we were walking into it.

I tossed Pettyjohn’s file aside, wishing for a drink, but I had to stay sober right now, I had to be able to think clearly about what to do. The smartest thing would have been to call the military from the mining station, have them send a warship out to take custody of the Yellowknife and its cargo, but if I had done that then whoever was behind this plot would go to ground and probably never be heard from again. The only thing I could do was to proceed as planned, hoping that the three of us could handle whatever waited, but with Turgeon dead, the crew of the Yellowknife would probably suspect something when we came on-board. If I wanted to flush out the person or persons responsible for this plot, I couldn’t just tell the truth about what had happened to Turgeon, I would need some kind of story, a cover to explain her absence.

I thought about the problem for hours, and when the answer finally came to me I laughed out loud. Palmer looked at me quizzically, Sirvenski asking, “What’s so funny?”

“It’s so damned obvious!” I shouted, slapping the armrests of my chair.

“Care to let us in on this revelation?” Palmer inquired sarcastically.

I nodded, my thoughts racing almost too fast for my mouth to keep up. “We haven’t sent any messages to the Yellowknife, they’re completely blind and deaf in space. So they don’t know that she came with us, hell they don’t even know if she made it back to Mars or not!”

“Which means what?” Palmer demanded, clearly becoming agitated.

“Which means that we don’t have to say that Turgeon is dead, or that she was killed on board the ship. All we have to say is that she made it back, but was injured, too injured to come with us. It’s so fucking simple I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner!”

Palmer rubbed his chin, a slight smile crossing his face. “That’s not bad, Boss.”

Sirvenski seemed troubled, finally asking, “We’re going through with this like nothing happened?”

“We have to, James. We have to find out who’s behind this.”

Palmer shook his head, “The kid may be on to something. We have two corpses in the cargo bay, that might not be so easy to explain when we start unloading, and if we try to keep the Yellowknife’s crew away from the hold, they’ll just become suspicious.”

I nodded, but a plan was already forming. “You’re right, but I think I have an idea.”

That night I fell asleep with two corpses in my quarters, safely tucked away behind the false backing of my closet I used to smuggle illegal goods. It was a tight fit for the two refrigerated containers, but with a little ingenuity and muscle we had been able to get both Turgeon and Pettyjohn into the secret compartment. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but as I lay in bed, I couldn’t help but start to feel the eeriness of having two dead women in my quarters.

The tragedy of Francesca Turgeon was only now starting to sink in, due to her sudden presence in my bedroom. Turgeon, the real one whom I had never known, had been a young woman just beginning life on her own, a life cut short by some heartless trillionaire who saw her only as a pawn in a cosmic game of chess. Without drugs or booze to blind me, it wasn’t hard to think of my son, who had also been senselessly murdered. He would have been sixteen by now, just a few years from college, from becoming his own man. I had missed so many things when he was growing up: birthdays, holidays, sports or school events, all because I was too busy with work to see him, to spend time with him. Now there were so many things I would also miss because he was gone: his first date, his first job, his first home, and all of those other firsts. When everything was over, I would have to tell Turgeon’s parents that like my son’s, their daughter’s life had been cut short, so that they would never be able to experience any more of her firsts. I finally fell asleep with tears in my eyes, tears for two young people who had never really had a chance to live.

The rest of the way to the Yellowknife was filled with nervous anticipation hidden just under the silent routine of daily ship operations. After hiding the bodies there was little else that we could do to prepare for the dangers that awaited us, since we had no idea how many of the Yellowknife’s crew would be still alive, what condition they would be in, and what their cargo was. Without that information, all we could do was to make a few clumsy gestures. Palmer and I took stock of our meager supply of weapons, including items that were not intended as weapons, but could be used in a pinch. The three of us took turns instructing the other two on various ship systems, so that if any of us were wounded, the others could conceivably handle the load. We checked the medical kits and firefighting gear to make sure it could be used in an emergency, and to determine if Pettyjohn had sabotaged anything during her stay on the Poseyville. None of those would probably amount to making any kind of real difference, but it kept us occupied so that we didn’t have as much time to fret over the unknown dangers that lurked on the Yellowknife.

Twelve days after leaving Mars, the Yellowknife finally came into view. It was smaller than the Poseyville by about two hundred meters, its hull the more tubular shape of a Sirius Regina-class hauler. The damage Pettyjohn-as-Turgeon had described was accurate, there was a gaping hole in the rear quarter of the hauler’s port side. “Is there any way to see what’s in the cargo bay?” I asked Sirvenski.

“Doesn’t seem to be anything unusual,” Sirvenski replied with a shrug. “A lot of standard-sized crates, but those could always be hiding something.”

“That’s what I figured. Well, let’s pay them a visit,” I tried to keep my voice calm and level, to make it sound as though this was as routine as any other run, but I doubted that my tone would make any difference right now.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Palmer grumbled, maneuvering the Poseyville around to dock with the Yellowknife’s starboard side. Sirvenski and Palmer worked for several minutes to line up and attach a connection between the airlocks of the two haulers, but after a couple of botched attempts and a lot of cursing, the Poseyville and Yellowknife were finally mated.

“OK, let’s suit up and make our grand entrance,” I said, standing up and leading the other two to the Poseyville’s airlock. It was assumed that the Yellowknife still had atmosphere, but we weren’t about to take chances, besides, the bulky spacesuits would provide some protection in case anyone tried to ambush us. I gave my stun pistol to Sirvenski, stuffing Pettyjohn’s pistol into one of my suit’s pockets, its weight a slight comfort. Once we were all suited up, I led the way through the airlock and down the short boarding tube to the Yellowknife’s airlock, which opened for me before I even reached it. Someone was still alive on the bridge, or at the very least, someone had programmed the airlock to open for anyone who happened to come near it. Once the three of us were through the boarding tube, the Yellowknife’s airlock closed and began to cycle.

“Should we keep our suits on?” Sirvenski asked.

“Take the helmets off, but leave the rest on,” I answered. That way if anyone tried to depressurize the ship, we might still have a chance of survival. The airlock finished its cycling, rolling open to reveal four haggard men with pistols.

The lead man was bald with a scraggly gray beard, I assumed he was in command not only by his age, but also by the tone of command in his voice. “Who are you?” He demanded without prelude.

“My name is Brent Gallowes, I’m captain of the Poseyville. Francesca Turgeon sent us to help you salvage your ship and cargo.”

The other man’s face wrinkled in a relieved smile. “So Fran is still alive? I wasn’t sure that she’d make it.”

“She suffered some pretty serious injuries, but she sends her regards,” I lied. If I had tipped anyone off, none of the tired faces seemed to show it.

“Good, good. I’m Travis Parker, captain of the Yellowknife. If you’ll follow me to the bridge, I’ll fill you in on the situation.”

I looked back at Sirvenski and Palmer, but their expressions were neutral. Obviously there could be a trap waiting for us on the bridge, but to insist that we meet about the Poseyville would only arouse suspicion. I didn’t want Parker and his crew to think that my crew and I guessed that anything out of the ordinary was going on, at least not yet. Not until I knew more about what we were dealing with.

On the bridge, Parker brought up a schematic of the ship, highlighting where the damage was. “As you saw coming in, the damage is concentrated on the port side. Since Francesca left, we’ve gone out in our suits, trying to repair some of the damage, but without the tools and spare parts, we could not create any kind of lasting patch. After our patchwork attempts failed, we spent most of our time trying to keep the generators running so that the emergency field sealing the hole will stay in place. We’ve drained just about every ounce of energy from all the Yellowknife’s systems, including life support, we only had about another day or two left when you arrived.”

“So the first thing we should do is evacuate everyone into the Poseyville,” I suggested, since I had no authority to boss Parker and his people around.

“Agreed. What materials have you brought with you?” I outlined what was in the Poseyville’s cargo bay, a smile coming to Parker’s tired face. “That will do nicely. We can begin after my men get some sleep, none of us have had a decent night’s sleep in weeks.”

“My crew can get started on the repairs…”

“No!” Parker interrupted harshly. “My people have surveyed the damage, and they know the ship, they’ll have a better idea of what to do.”

Apparently from his reaction, Parker knew that there was something very valuable on his ship, and he was determined not to let my crew or I see it. I wanted to insist on Sirvenski supervising the repairs, but that might tip Parker off that I had some idea of what was going on. It would be best to play it innocently and concede to his wishes. “All right, but I’ll want James running the robots from inside the ship, he’s more familiar with the software than your people.”

“Very well,” Parker nodded.

“We should move your cargo onto my ship, just in case anything goes wrong.”

Parker looked ready to protest, but he must have decided that he would make me suspicious of what was in the cargo bay if he refused. “I will have my crew transfer over as much of the cargo as possible.”

“Good, then I guess we’ll run some checks on the repair equipment and make sure you have enough room,” I replied as good-naturedly as I could. I turned to leave, Sirvenski and Palmer following, hoping that Parker couldn’t read the look of suspicion on Sirvenski’s face.

“They’re up to something,” Palmer said on the bridge, stating what we all knew was true.

“Of course they are,” I responded, turning to look at Sirvenski. “James, can you establish a link with their computer?”

Sirvenski snorted, “At this range it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. You think they have something incriminating in their files?”

I shook my head, “No, Parker is too good for that, but maybe the ship’s logs will tell us something about the accident.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Palmer said. “Of course the only way to really find out will be to send someone in.”

I raised an eyebrow skeptically, “Are you volunteering?”

“I’m the only one with any sort of training in this kind of operation, it would make sense for me to go.”

“Just remember that if you’re caught, I had no knowledge of your actions. James and I will be on the bridge seeing what we can find if you need any assistance.”

Palmer chuckled arrogantly, “Help, from you two? You’ve got to be kidding. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

After Palmer had gone, Sirvenski looked up from his terminal. “He’s pretty sure of himself, isn’t he?”

I smiled, shaking my head. “Most of that is a cover. Brian got thrown out of the UNDA after a training accident; his fighter clipped another fighter during some maneuvers, killing the other pilot. Brian might have been able to keep flying, but he couldn’t handle the pressure, so he walked away from everything. He tries to keep up the fighter pilot bravado, but it’s just an act, don’t let it get to you.”

Sirvenski nodded silently, going back to work. So far the kid had been handling the stress beautifully on the outside, but I could see that it was eating away at him from the inside. He had signed on for a simple flight engineer’s job, and now he was thrust into the middle of someone’s cloak-and-dagger game, about as out-of-place as I was. I could only hope that both of us would live to see the end of this. “I’m into the ship’s logs, but so far there isn’t really much. The Yellowknife doesn’t seem to have very good sensors, even for a hauler, so we aren’t going to have a lot of data.”

“That’s OK, whatever you find will be helpful.” Sirvenski shrugged, working at an almost inhuman pace. While he worked, I ran some calculations on how much cargo room I could free up for whatever the Yellowknife’s crew was bringing aboard. There wasn’t much, but it would probably be enough, especially once the repair materials were unloaded.

“I think I’ve got about as much as I can,” Sirvenski announced. I stepped over to his terminal to see whatever he had found. Sirvenski touched a few buttons, a computer simulation of the Yellowknife appearing on the screen. “The Yellowknife was moving at top speed for the research station, with apparently no problems when something suddenly struck their hull.”

“Any idea what it was?”

“Not really, but it wasn’t a stray asteroid or comet fragment. From the sensor records it was metal, although the composition doesn’t seem to be like anything I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t get anything else on the object, but when I ran through some calculations I found something else odd.” Sirvenski paused dramatically, the display changing to show a red sphere plowing into the side of the Yellowknife. “Whatever the object was, it was going just under light speed when it impacted.”

“What? That’s not possible.” Even the fastest human-made probes couldn’t do more than half the speed of light, which led my mind to a few unsettling thoughts. “If it was going that fast, why didn’t it destroy the ship? That kind of impact should have caused far more damage.”

“I don’t know,” Sirvenski shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course it makes sense,” I heard Palmer’s voice announce as he came through the door. Behind him were the four surviving members of the Yellowknife’s crew, all of them with weapons drawn. “Unfortunately you two won’t be around to understand.”

“Brian, what the hell are you doing?” I shouted. Palmer smiled, moving to stand beside Parker, who motioned with his pistol for Sirvenski and I to step away from the console. Sirvenski looked ready to do something stupid, but I put a hand on his shoulder and surrendered Pettyjohn’s pistol and my stun pistol.

“There’s a fortune inside that cargo hold, and I’m making sure I get part of the cut,” Palmer replied icily.

“So what about us, you’re going to kill us?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

Palmer shook his head. “Unfortunately, with Turgeon dead and the Yellowknife’s senior flight engineer killed in the accident, we’re a little short on flight engineers, so James will live.” Palmer stopped, coming to within a few inches of my face. “We do, however, have more than enough hauler captains, so Brent, I guess that leaves you out of luck.”

Chapter Three

2007-06-12T13:29:00.001-07:00

Chapter Three

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was a lot like the old gold rushes in the 19th Century. Once a single expedition had turned a profit, dozens of corporations rushed in to seek claim to the big floating rocks, hoping that burrowing into the asteroids would reveal new sources of raw materials. Not much more than basic minerals like iron had been discovered, but even in an advanced civilization, those primitive metals had some value. So the corporations that had remained continued to mine the asteroids. At last count, there were about eight major companies still operating in the belt.

The only difference between the asteroid belt and old California or the Klondike was a severe lack of sleazy attractions. The mining stations were professional businesses, there were no cathouses, casinos, or other shady places for the hundreds of workers charged with operating and maintaining the robots that did the actual mining work. The average asteroid belt miner signed a contract for one year, after which they could stay for another year or return home with a nice fat bank account. The mining stations didn’t turn huge profits, but the wages had to be high to attract desperate people willing to stare at computer screens and risk getting spaced by asteroid debris for a year. It was no wonder, then, that the traffic control officers were not always the most qualified individuals.

As the Poseyville approached the belt, I could see Palmer’s eyes start to shine. The asteroid belt was the one place in the system where the pilot could really show off his skills if he could get the bulky hauler through the belt without taking severe hull damage from debris. I had never navigated the belt in my years as a captain, but Palmer had done so at least a dozen times by his recollection, which I discounted as mostly boasting. Nevertheless, I sat back and watched as Palmer eased the ship into the outermost edge of the asteroid belt, gingerly moving the ship around the asteroids that came into our path as we closed on our goal.

The Poseyville would not actually complete its run through the belt in one day. It would take a few days to arrange passage with the various mining companies, to make sure that they kept their operations out of the way while the Poseyville went through. In the meantime, the ship glided in to dock at the Central Logistics Station, the port at the edge of the belt where all haulers came to unload their supplies for redistribution to the companies that had requested the cargoes. This is where I would have to meet with various officials to grease their palms so that my ship could go about its business without running into an unfortunate “accident” inside the belt.

After Palmer had docked, I stood up, motioning to Sirvenski. “James and I will be going aboard. Brian, you stay here with our esteemed guest,” I tossed an icy glance to Turgeon, who returned it silently.

“Will do, Boss,” Palmer replied, almost too happily. I had noticed over the last few days how he and Turgeon often disappeared at the same time, returning to the bridge with not very well concealed smiles on their faces. It was not entirely unexpected for Palmer to go after Turgeon, especially given the way that Sirvenski and I had already embarrassed ourselves to the woman, but I couldn’t help but wonder what she saw in Palmer. Sirvenski seemed hesitant to follow me, but finally left his post and trailed behind me to the airlock.

Usually I would have left the flight engineer aboard to supervise the ship, but there were some things that I needed Sirvenski’s expertise for. Something about Turgeon kept bothering me, maybe it was her icy demeanor, or maybe it was her story, but I had a gut feeling that there was more than she was telling me. With Sirvenski’s computer skills I might be able to find out before we arrived at the Yellowknife.

The Central Logistics Station was nothing like the customs station over Mars. The station was much smaller, but the corridors were wide, with more than enough room to accommodate the light foot traffic. The walls, the ceiling, the deck, everything was a uniform gray, giving the place the look of a station that had not only been built recently, but that was a place of business. There was an assortment of shops charging enormously inflated prices for goods from Earth and its colonies, and a few up-scale bars, but overall the place was much less seedy than the customs station. The bars were all for the mining company employees, with a legitimate, respectable feel. Of course there were probably other bars hidden away to cater to those looking for a little more off-color entertainment, but it was my first time aboard the station and I hadn’t any idea about such things. Sirvenski was as clueless as I, following a step behind me and trying to remain inconspicuous.

Along the way I kept my eyes peeled for Net terminals, I would need to find one out of the way for Sirvenski to use. I finally stopped the random search, deciding on a more focused approach. I stopped at an information kiosk, which quickly gave me the location of all Net terminals as well as directions to the station administrator’s office. I downloaded the latter for myself and studied the former for a few long moments. I finally steered Sirvenski into an alley between two small shops, handing him my comcard.

“What do you want a Net terminal for?” Sirvenski asked.

“I want you to find out anything you can about this Ms. Turgeon and who she’s working for,” I replied quietly.

“You think there’s something wrong?”

I sighed, “I don’t know, but something isn’t sitting right with me. Try and dig up whatever you can, just to make me feel better.”

“You know that kind of Net time is going to be expensive, especially out here…”

“Don’t worry about it, Fischer will cover it,” I reassured him, giving him a wallet for Fischer’s expense account. I gave Sirvenski a final fatherly pat on the shoulder and left him to find the terminal I selected, then I made my way up to the administrator’s office.

Bret Higginson was the typical station administrator: competent, but with a blind eye toward what decent people would call corruption. His office reflected his status in life: a few knickknacks, reprints of paintings, and an imitation oak desk, just a mid-level mining company employee trying to look more important than he was. I sat uncomfortably on a thinly padded chair while Higginson reviewed the mining activity for the next few days.

“You’re asking for quite a large disruption of operations,” Higginson grumbled, scrolling through screens of data while I watched light reflect off of his bald head.

“I’m aware of that,” I replied, trying not to sound too bored. There were times when I wished that we could all be more open about bribery instead of having to put on a charade of legitimacy. “I’m prepared to compensate anyone for the loss of revenue they may experience.”

Higginson turned towards me, smiling broadly. “Very good, Mr. Gallowes. I can get you a list of all the company contacts, you’ll have to arrange to meet with them individually.” Higginson paused, clearly waiting for his own bribe. With a barely audible sigh I took his wallet and downloaded two hundred into it. Higginson was apparently satisfied, he turned back to his computer and downloaded the contact list to my comcard.

I took the comcard back, shaking Higginson’s hand and uttering some pleasantry before I left. It was getting late in the “day”, most of the contacts were already gone for the evening. It didn’t matter, I walked through the almost-empty corridors until I found Sirvenski at the Net terminal. “Find anything yet?” I asked.

He shook his head, “Nothing really, just the standard information on the Yellowknife and Turgeon’s employment file. Getting into government files on her and the ship will take a little longer.”

“Don’t worry, you can do that tomorrow, I’m sure there will be plenty of time while I haggle with the locals,” I said it as lightly as I could, not really looking forward to two or three days of wading through small talk and bribery. Sirvenski disengaged from the Net after a few minutes, giving me what little information he had found so far.

The problem with using the Net, especially from here, was that it took forever to access anything. Signals had to routed through satellite networks back to hubs on Mars, Earth, and the moon, then back. It was a long wait, made even longer if asteroids or debris blocked the station’s equipment. What Sirvenski might be able to find out in an hour on Earth would take four or five hours out here, but it was the only Net-capable station outside of Mars. If I wanted to assuage my fears about Turgeon and the Yellowknife, I would have to endure the long wait.

Sirvenski and I checked into the station’s only hotel, renting two rooms scarcely bigger than a closet, but it would be enough. It would have made things easier if the hotel had Net access, but that kind of equipment was too expensive for such a small business to operate. I was about to leave Sirvenski in his room when I saw a troubled look on his face. “Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I’m just hoping that those guys we left my sisters with don’t try anything,” Sirvenski replied.

“I wouldn’t worry, they don’t have any interest in girls and they’re being paid more than enough to keep them honest.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sirvenski didn’t sound convinced and I started to wonder what was really eating at him.

I sat down on the bed next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Is there something else?”

“I’m not sure if I can do this, leave them alone every time I go out for some cargo run.”

I smiled, doing my best to sound paternal, although I was five years out of practice. “With the money you’ll make off this mission you won’t have to stay on Mars, you can move your whole family back to Earth, where they’ll be a lot safer.” I knew better than anyone that Earth was not entirely safe, but crime and corruption were much less rampant there.

Sirvenski smiled weakly, but there were tears in his eyes. “After my father died, my mother had to take care of all of us, working two or even three jobs until I was old enough to help support the family. I don’t want the same thing that happened to my father happen to me, I don’t want to let them down like he did!”

“Look, James, you’re a bright kid, you won’t let that happen,” the words sounded hollow even to my own ears. It was hard to comfort him when I still hadn’t worked out issues about letting my family down. We were more alike than I had ever realized, both of us had lost family, but Sirvenski at least still had some of his. “You could always finish school after this is over, get a job on Earth and stay close to them.”

“Yeah, I could, but…” His voice trailed off and he almost winced as if in pain. “I like this.”

It was hard to not break out laughing, but I could understand how he felt. Even with the sleazy locales, and my own problems with pills and drinking, there was still such freedom to being on a hauler. Sometimes during a run I could stare out at the stars and be swept up in the vastness of space, everything seeming to melt away until there was nothing but the beauty of the universe all around me. It was probably like sailors in ancient times staring out at the huge expanse of the ocean and the endless horizon, it was a kind of spiritual moment between man and nature. Those moments were fleeting, but they were one of the reasons that I had remained a hauler captain as long as I had. For a young man like James Sirvenski, who had spent most of his life in the festering slums of Mars, I could see why such a sight would be so addictive.

“They’re your family, James, they’ll understand and respect your decision.” That was not always true, my own parents and siblings had teased me for years about becoming an accountant, “bean counting” as they called it. “Even if they don’t agree with it, they’ll stand by you and support you, that’s what a family is for.”

Sirvenski smiled, I could see that I was getting through to him. “Maybe you’re right. I can decide after this over, there’s plenty of time.” I patted Sirvenski on the shoulder and left him for the confines of my own room. The talk with Sirvenski only made me miss my own family even more, but unfortunately I hadn’t brought any scotch with me to help drown the pain. I popped a few Lexmafil, leaning back in bed as my entire body started to go numb. A few minutes later I drifted into a dreamless slumber, the pain seeming so far away.

It was a good thing that I had a restful night, because the next day was very trying. After making sure that Sirvenski was set up on his terminal, I went to meet with the representative of Bon-Dar Industries, one of the smaller players in the asteroid mining. I stepped into the manager’s office and it was as though all the color in the universe had suddenly been drained away. Everything in the office was a shade of gray from the walls of the room to the manager’s gray hair severely scraped back into an unattractive bun. The woman’s personality was not much better than her concept of office design.

I never even found out the woman’s name, there was no small talk or pleasantries, she simply handed me a stack of legal comcards and watched me closely while I signed every form in triplicate. After stamping my digital signature at all the indicated places, I paid the woman a “processing fee” and took a receipt that guaranteed me that all Bon-Dar operations would stop in the time it would take my ship to navigate through their work zones. I shook the woman’s pale, cold hand and left to meet with the next representative.

Cale Harvey of McGuire Mining Company was a completely different specimen than the last representative I had visited. He insisted on spending hours talking about trivial things from politics and business to the status of his favorite sports teams. Harvey was a huge man with a thick Texas drawl that was almost as interesting as his opinions, but eventually I steered him back on course to clear the Poseyville through his territory. I had to go through the same process of signing a mountain of forms, until at last I paid yet another “processing fee”, only to spend another half hour listening to Harvey chat about his last hunting trip on Earth. I was finally able to free myself from his grasp, almost two hours behind schedule.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of going from office-to-office, each company manager with a different style and a different business pace. I managed to get almost all of the companies by the end of the day, with the largest two for the next day, which was about what I had planned. I found Sirvenski at his terminal, nibbling at leftovers from the lunch I had brought him hours ago. “So how’s it going?” I asked him.

He shrugged indifferently. “Still not much other than very basic information. I have a kind of skimpy history of Francesca Turgeon if you want to read it.”

I took a comcard from him, glancing over the contents. As Sirvenski had said, it was pretty short of details, just giving the woman’s birth date, place of birth, and some brief information on her schooling and career. Turgeon was originally from Sherbrooke, Quebec, but her family had moved to Prague when she was seven. She had attended a local college for two years until taking her flight engineer certification test and signing up with Lightfoot Transport, the company that operated the Yellowknife. She had served on the Yellowknife for two years as a junior flight engineer, apprenticing from a more veteran flight engineer, a policy that some companies and some captains mandated. Fischer had never made such a thing standard, and I never saw a need for more than one flight engineer, but apprenticeship was a good way for a flight engineer to get hands-on experience. It was something I’d have to think about after this mission, when I became a sole proprietor.

The simple biography Sirvenski had given me did little to ease my mind. There was a lot that we didn’t know about this woman, a lot that could be hidden. I watched Sirvenski work for another three hours, then we went back to our rooms for the night. Sirvenski was making progress, by tomorrow he promised to get into government intelligence files to see if he could find out anything about Turgeon, the Jovian Research Station, or the station’s benefactor, but time was running out. I drowned my worries with a few Lexmafil, feeling the tension melt away until I was lost in the embrace of sleep.

The first half of the day went just as the previous. I met with the local manager for Hackett, Weinrich, and Perrault Company, an investment firm that owned a large chunk of the asteroid mining rights in the belt. The company did not actually own any mining equipment, rather it leased local contractors for its operations. Given the large amount of territory Hackett, Weinrich, and Perrault operated in the belt, there was quite a bit of haggling over how much the company would lose as my ship passed through.

Fred Hackett was in a similar situation as Jorgen Fischer on Mars, only Hackett had offended the wrong high-placed person in the company, who had since schemed to place Hackett as far out of the loop as possible. Like Jorgen Fischer, the posting had done little to dampen Fred Hackett’s entrepreneurial spirit. Hackett seemed to sense that I was over a barrel, so he did what he could to milk as much money out of me as possible.

The negotiations went as high as three hundred thousand until I finally threatened to walk out and take the issue up with Hackett’s friends back on Earth. After that, the price of passage sank to a manageable seventy-five thousand unibucks. I paid Hackett, finished signing forms, and took leave of him, savoring the defeated look on his face as I left much richer than he would have liked.

I checked back with Sirvenski before my next appointment. He was working on the government files, but it was slow work to cut through the encryption, security systems, and so forth, especially as far away as he was. I left my relay on so that he could contact me when and if he ever got access to any important information. Meanwhile, I had one last appointment to keep, with Mr. Toby Hershbek of Jumars Mineral Development Corporation.

It was clear from Hershbek’s office that his firm was the number one player in asteroid mining between Mars and Jupiter. His desk was real oak, his chairs were real leather, his paintings on the walls were originals, even the man himself was wearing a real designer suit that must have cost five thousand unibucks and a gold watch that must have been another ten thousand. He looked like a lot of my bosses back at Kovalchuk, Spezza, and Weiss, which made me wonder what he was doing out here. That soon became evident when he introduced himself as the CEO, not just some regional manager.

“Thank-you for coming, Mr. Gallowes. I’m sure by now you’ve met with the various other firms that do business here, I hope you had fun with their bureaucratic red tape,” Hershbek’s face broke into a wide grin, which I knew was forced, to put me more at ease. “The difference between my company and the others is that Jumars Mineral Development is the only company based entirely within the belt itself. We’re not just some prospecting operation that plans to get what we can and run. We’re in this for the long haul, besides mining, we also have several other ventures planned to make the belt a hub for commerce with the inevitable expansion of colonization to the far reaches of the Solar System and beyond.”

It was a standard sales pitch and I started to wonder where it was going, but as Hershbek wound down I began to understand. With so many “ventures” going on, he’d want much more to pass through his turf. Like any good businessman, behind the designer suits and platitudes was a wolf looking to devour a few sheep. As I suspected, Hershbek let his message sink in, then hit me with the punch line. “Of course you have to understand, that with so much of an investment in this belt, we lose quite a bit of productivity when we have to stop operations to let a ship through.”

“How much of a loss of productivity are we talking about?” I asked, a phony smile on my face as well. I’d played this game before, but Hershbek was going to be a tougher customer than most.

“Well, Mr. Gallowes, I’m sure that you’re on a tight budget, so I’m willing to make you a deal. Fifty thousand, plus I have a cargo that needs to be delivered.”

Fifty thousand was a good price, but what kind of cargo was he talking about? It could only be something illegal. “That sounds reasonable, but first I would have to inspect this cargo to see if my ship has room.”

“Of course, Mr. Gallowes. Follow me.” Hershbek stood, walking briskly from behind his desk and down the hall to a warehouse. I followed a step behind, into a dark corner where a single long crate lay on a pallet. Hershbek looked to make sure that no one was around, then explained what the cargo was while he opened the crate. “We found this in one of the mining tunnels about a week ago, but a supply ship isn’t due for another two weeks, so I thought you could take this off my hands now.”

The crate came open with a hiss to reveal a frozen storage container. From the size of it I knew what it was and some part of me wanted to throw up. There was a human body inside, yet Hershbek continued to talk as though it were a broken piece of equipment. “This isn’t one of our workers, and bringing this to the attention of the police would bring unwelcome attention onto the company. So a more discreet method of disposal is in order.”

I couldn’t find the words to reply, so I simply wiped the frost off of the window on the top of the container to see who was inside. Once the frost had cleared I recoiled in shock and horror, my legs turning to rubber beneath me. Hershbek reached out to steady me with an arm, but I could no longer control my urge to vomit. I somehow avoided throwing up on Hershbek’s expensive suit, although I did get some on his shoes, not that it mattered at that point anyway. For lying in the container, the coffin as it were, was the still face of Francesca Turgeon.

The body was hardly recognizable, it was so bloody and bruised, but I could tell from her face that she was indeed Turgeon. However she had died, it was not an accident, her hands had been chopped off, her eyes taken from her head, her scalp brutally slashed off, and there were long gashes all over her body. Someone had not only killed Turgeon, they had butchered her.

My stomach finally stabilized a little, the terror in my brain receding enough to think rationally for a moment. I snatched the relay from my belt, shouting into it, “James, James, do you hear me?” There was only static in reply, horrible thoughts crossing my mind. I sprinted away from Hershbek and towards the terminal where I had left Sirvenski, praying that I was not too late.

As I ran, I thought of all the possibilities that I could, but I still could not answer the questions haunting me. Who had killed the real Francesca Turgeon? Who did they work for? What did they want? I could only hope that I found the imposter Turgeon and got some answers. I skidded to a halt at Sirvenski’s terminal, but he wasn’t there. The computer was still downloading information, the machine adorned with Sirvenski’s notes and food wrappers, but there was no sign of the boy. “Shit,” I cursed to myself. Why hadn’t I noticed something about her, something that would have told me Turgeon was not who she claimed to be?

It took a minute for the self-criminations to clear from my mind. I hadn’t noticed anything because this woman was a professional. She may have given Sirvenski and I the cold shoulder, but there was no evidence that she could not have been the Yellowknife’s junior flight engineer. She had covered her tracks as well as anyone could, it was just her bad luck that Hershbek had revealed the corpse of the real Turgeon to me. So, I thought to myself, where would she go now?

The obvious answer was the Poseyville. If Turgeon, or whoever she really was, knew that I had found out her secret, she would have to make herself scarce, and the Poseyville was the only ship around to do it. That meant that not only was Sirvenski in danger, but so was Palmer, although at least he would probably live until he had taken Turgeon to wherever she was going.

I quickly thought about what to do next. I could go to the station security force and hope that they were able to snag Turgeon without any incident. The problem was, besides that the security team would probably not care if Sirvenski was killed in the process of apprehending Turgeon, I didn’t want to call attention to the Poseyville or its mission. There was something very big going on, and if I wanted to know what it was, I couldn’t have my ship impounded for an investigation. Which meant that I had to stop her by myself. Checking the supply of ammunition in my stun pistol, I ran towards the Poseyville as fast as I dared.

It would take time for the ship to get clearance to launch, although if Turgeon was really desperate she could have the airlock disengaged in a couple of minutes and take off, but that was only if she thought I would go to the station authorities. If she gambled that I wouldn’t, then she would try to be more nonchalant about her exit, which would give me more time. I dashed across the station, knocking over quite a few people, but still I knew that I could be too late.

I finally reached the airlock after what seemed like an eternity, and to my relief saw that the Poseyville was still docked. The airlock was shut, but I had the necessary command codes to open the airlock and gain access to the ship. As the airlock door opened, a shot rang out, a bullet embedding itself into the bulkhead to my left. I flattened against the wall, my stun pistol suddenly feeling like a toy in comparison to the gun Turgeon had.

In the holopics I had seen as a kid, the heroic space captain always had some kind of laser gun to blast the bad guys with. Unfortunately, reality had yet to catch up with fantasy, there were still no laser pistols, even for heroic space captains. The traditional handgun had improved over the centuries, with bullets that went faster and caused more damage. There were several types of bullets, the most standard of which was the “slug”, a traditional bullet that focused damage in one location. There were also “fléchettes”, which released hundreds of tiny darts that caused more damage to the overall surface of the victim, although it might not be as bad as a single slug shot to one vital location. Other types of munitions existed, but I could tell from the damage to the bulkhead that Turgeon had used a slug, although most pistols could accommodate various types of ammunition simultaneously. At the very least, though, it gave me some kind of idea of the type of weapon she had, which I might be able to use to my advantage.

I heard footsteps pounding the deck away from me, back towards the cargo hold. Turgeon obviously didn’t want to risk charging my position, even though my cover wasn’t that good, instead she would go to the cargo hold where she would have a better position to fight from. I took a deep breath, then followed after her.

I stopped at the access door to the cargo bay, feeling my heart rising up into my throat. I had never been in combat, not even a bar fight or a playground scuffle to test my mettle with. Fischer had provided me with some self-defense courses, but they didn’t help much in this situation. Turgeon had Sirvenski and possibly Palmer hostage and I was completely alone with just one stun pistol that I had fired only twice. I took another deep breath, letting it out slowly and concentrating on Sirvenski, the boy who was counting on me to save him. I wished I had a bottle with me to take a shot of courage, but I finally forced all doubts aside and slapped the button to open the door.

I dashed inside, throwing myself behind a crate just as a shot went over my head. My heart continued to race, but I risked taking a peek over the crate. Turgeon was not cowering behind a cargo container, she stood boldly in the center of the room with Sirvenski in one arm and a large, nasty-looking pistol in her other hand. I could almost see the change in her face, the hard, cold mask of a professional killer.

“Come on, Gallowes, give up your gun or I’ll shoot the kid!” Her voice had subtly changed, becoming harsher and haughtier.

“If I give you my weapon you’ll shoot us both anyway!” I shouted back, trying to sound tougher than I felt. “But we both know that if you shoot James you won’t walk out of here a free woman!” I kept behind the crate, peeking just around the edge to take in my surroundings. There were containers all around, if I could use them for cover, I might be able to circle around behind Turgeon without her noticing. I could feel sweat dripping down my face and building up on my palms, but I steadied myself, hoping that maybe I could find stall her long enough to find a way to make my move.

“If I surrender I won’t be free either,” Turgeon replied, tightening the grip on her weapon.

“Look, I don’t know why you killed the real Francesca Turgeon and why you’re posing as her, but all I want is to go safely on my way to finish the mission I was paid to do. Let James go and you’re free to go.” I looked around the hold, but there was no way to maneuver around behind Turgeon without her seeing me, then it would be too late.

“No!” Sirvenski shouted. “You can’t let her go free!”

“Shut up!” Turgeon hissed.

“I had finally gotten into the U.N. Intelligence files when she came after me. Her real name is Lindsey Pettyjohn, she’s wanted in at least thirteen different countries for murder, sabotage, espionage, and other crimes. If we let her go, she’s just going to kill again.”

“So what do you want me to do, James? Shoot both of you?” I asked incredulously.

“Maybe that’s what it will take, but at least we’d be putting a dangerous woman away!”

There was another crate to my right about three meters away, I took a deep breath, then bolted across the gap, a shot whizzing over my head to bury itself in the wall behind me. “I won’t sacrifice you, James! Lindsey, if that’s your real name, I made you a promise and I’ll honor it. Let James go and you can go free.”

Pettyjohn did about the last thing I would have hoped for, she laughed derisively, tightening her grip on Sirvenski. “You’re a fool, Gallowes, you can’t kill anyone, you aren’t the type. You’re just a naïve fool, like Francesca Turgeon.” Pettyjohn shifted her weight, steadying Sirvenski against her body. “She was so trusting that she never suspected anything until it was too late. It was too bad that there wasn’t enough time for a proper, thorough interrogation, but I enjoyed her screams as I beat the information out of her. For hours and hours she begged for me to kill her, begged for the pain to stop, until I had finally taken every scrap of knowledge, every dirty little secret from her. Maybe you’d like to know how she died? I started with the scalp, slowly peeling the skin off until I was down right to the bone. Then I took her hands, one at a time, letting the blood flow into a container so I could use it later. Finally, just before she died, I took out her eyes, so that my face was the last thing she would ever see. Then I dumped that pretty little girl’s body in a mining shaft, it’s a pity that I couldn’t find a place where I could incinerate the body, I would have enjoyed watching her burn.”

As Pettyjohn spoke, she slowly maneuvered towards me, hoping that her words would keep me distracted long enough to get a clear shot at me. I wanted to charge forward and beat the daylights out of her then and there, but I tried to stay focused on saving Sirvenski. “It’s not going to work, Lindsey, just let James go and this will all be over!”

I craned my neck around the edge of the container to gauge her reaction. She smiled, one hand running through her red hair seductively while the other held the gun on Sirvenski. “Do you like the hair, little boy,” she cooed at Sirvenski. “I had never thought that doctors on Mars could be so competent, but I guess for the right price, they can do a good job, so good that I might keep it after this is over.”

“You sick pervert!” Sirvenski shouted, trying to free himself, but the hand Pettyjohn had been using to play with her hair moved with an almost impossible quickness to pin Sirvenski to her own body. In the brief confusion I wasn’t able to get a shot, but I did launch myself across another gap to hide behind a different container.

“It’s not going to do you any good, Gallowes. I’m a professional, I’ve killed hundreds of people, many of them much better trained and equipped than you. I promise you that if you surrender, I’ll make sure that you die quickly.”

“You can’t show up at the Yellowknife without me,” I shot back. “They’ll know something is up then.”

“I’m sure I can make up an excuse for your tragic demise,” Pettyjohn replied, though not as confidently as before.

“I don’t think so. You need us, both of us.” I stopped, noticing a shadow move behind Pettyjohn and Sirvenski. I had a good idea who it was, and what I had to do now. I casually stepped out from the cover of the container, my weapon aimed squarely at Pettyjohn. “You need us, at least until you get what you want from the Yellowknife.”

I started to move towards Pettyjohn, watching her tighten her finger on the trigger of her pistol. Just a couple more seconds, I thought to myself. “I don’t need either of you!” She shouted just as the sound of a pistol firing echoed through the cargo hold. I dove behind a crate, the pistol barking twice more, my head popping up just in time to see Sirvenski throw Pettyjohn’s limp form to the deck, her back torn to ribbons by three fléchette bullets. Palmer materialized from the shadows, a big military-issue pistol in his hand. “Brian, what the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

“I was running a check on the cargo when I heard a shot and someone coming this way. I took cover, but I didn’t have a clear shot until you came and focused all of her attention on you so I could get a better angle,” Palmer replied coolly, but his arrogant tone seemed forced and hollow.

“Well I’m glad you were here,” I replied thankfully. “Are you all right, James?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sirvenski mumbled, looking down at Pettyjohn’s corpse.

“Why don’t you go and clean up, Brian and I can take care of this,” I told Sirvenski, patting him on the back. He nodded numbly and walked away, leaving Palmer and I to find somewhere to store Pettyjohn’s body until we got back to Earth.

After the body was set into a storage crate and the blood was cleaned up, I squared things away with Hershbek, taking on Turgeon’s corpse and paying him fifty thousand unibucks for permission to cross through his company’s territory. I made sure not to mention Pettyjohn’s death or discuss why I had left in such a hurry earlier, but Hershbek did not try to press me for information anyway, some things were better off not knowing about.

Before the Poseyville took off, I used the Net to check news around the Solar System to see if our mysterious trillionaire might have tipped his or her hand at all. I couldn’t see anything to implicate their identity, but I did see an article that confirmed just how deep of trouble my crew and I were in. The article, first printed in the New Freeland News, revealed that the day after my ship had left the customs station, an explosive device planted on his car had killed Jorgen Fischer. The New Freeland authorities had no idea who was behind it or why, but I knew that it had to be Pettyjohn. I couldn’t be sure just how much Fischer had known, but obviously Pettyjohn was being thorough in covering her tracks. It made we wonder just what was so important on the Yellowknife that it was worth killing for, but with a tired sigh I knew that I would soon find out.

Chapter Two

2007-06-12T13:28:00.001-07:00

Chapter Two

It had taken humanity over a hundred years to spread from the first stations in Earth orbit to Mars. First there had been larger and larger stations in Earth orbit that provided the foundation for the eventual colonization of the moon, which itself was a stepping-stone to Mars. The colony on the red planet had been around for only thirty years, long enough to establish five domed cities and dozens of smaller settlements, housing nearly twice the number of humans than the lunar colony. It should be no surprise, then, that the state of the Mars colony was always bordering on full-fledged chaos.

Like the customs station above the planet, virtually anyone and anything was for sale on Mars. Since the colony relied on Earth and the moon for a full ninety-five percent of its goods, the cost of anything from table salt to fine wine was astronomical compared to the prices on Earth. That kind of inflation meant that everyone struggled to survive, and the way the police survived was through bribery.

Bribery was as common on Mars as changing one’s clothes, sometimes even more so. It was something any commercial merchant was accustomed to. So I never thought twice about it as I slipped a police officer a hundred unidollars on my way through the New Freeland spaceport. It was what could be considered an insurance payment, since the bribe would insure the officer and his partner didn’t take me into custody for phony charges. It was how business was done on Mars, and that was why it was no surprise that Jorgen Fischer was as successful as he was.

Fischer, as his name implied, was one member of the family that had founded Fischer Galactic Transport. Unfortunately, he’d gotten a bad break at birth, being the youngest of the family, which meant that while his five older brothers and sisters ran the company from plush Earth locales like New York, Paris, or Tokyo, Jorgen was stuck literally in the middle of nowhere. The Fischer Galactic Transport Martian Division Headquarters was located about ten kilometers from the New Freeland spaceport, a separate complex in the middle of the rust-colored wastelands of Mars. It was like the wheel of an old bicycle with the offices and control facilities in the center and over twenty landing pads making up the spokes of the wheel.

Fischer ruled the entire complex like a petty tyrant, his bad temper and spontaneous firings were legendary. For that reason, plus his small stature, many called him “Napoleon” behind his back. I had only met Jorgen Fischer a handful of times, usually from a distance at staff meetings or conferences, but I knew that if Napoleon wanted to see me personally, it could only be bad.

It took almost a half hour until Fischer’s secretary waved me into his decadent office. From the thick carpets to the original paintings on the wall, everything in Fischer’s office was enormously expensive, and paid for either by his family’s money, his company expense account, or one of his side businesses. I sat down in an antique leather chair, waiting while Fischer made a big deal about reviewing some budgets before his beady black eyes looked up at me.

“Well, Gallowes, I see you made it here in one piece,” Fischer began, his voice as cool and precise as a glacier, part of the image he tried to cultivate to intimidate employees. Apparently he had reigned in his temper since the call to me on the customs station.

“Yes, sir, but I’m afraid there’s a problem…” I began, but Fischer cut me off.

“There will be time to discuss other affairs later, for now, though, let’s concentrate on the business at hand. Specifically, there is a very important mission, and you are the only man for the job.”

“I hate to argue, sir, but we have dozens of ships…”

“You are the best captain around these parts, Gallowes, you are someone I can trust to get the job done and to be…discreet.”

I could tell from the last word that whatever this mission was, it was not something that Fischer was going to let customs officials in on. “What’s the nature of this mission?”

Fischer held up a hand, punching the intercom to his secretary. “Show Ms. Turgeon in.” The door opened seconds later, I swiveled my head to see a very stunning, very young woman enter the room. Ms. Turgeon had the pale skin of anyone who spent a lot of time in space, but with her sea-green eyes and flowing red hair, it only made her seem like a delicate flower, except for the peach splotch on her left cheek that was obviously a piece of tempskin used to cover a scar or burn. Her body was tall and thin, but she moved with the grace of someone who knows that she is beautiful. “Brent Gallowes, this is Ms. Francesca Turgeon, junior flight engineer of the Yellowknife.” Turgeon stuck out her hand, and to my own embarrassment, I kissed it as though she were royalty.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, a little shocked at the way I was coming on to this woman. Then again, it had been over five years since I had been with anyone, so perhaps it was not all that surprising after all.

“And you, Mr. Gallowes,” her cool tone of voice shattering my upstart hopes for any romantic action. Neither she nor Fischer seemed to notice the grimace on my face. Turgeon took a seat on the edge of Fischer’s desk while he continued.

“Ms. Turgeon arrived only two days ago in a lifeboat from a hauler called the Yellowknife. The ship struck, uh, some kind of object just outside the asteroid belt. We need your ship to salvage the Yellowknife’s cargo and deliver it to the Jovian Research Station.”

The Jovian Research Station had been started only five years ago by an eccentric trillionaire who wanted to unlock the secrets of the universe, so he or she funded numerous astronomical projects, including the research station in a loose orbit between Jupiter and Saturn. The station had the best equipment in the system to study Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and their peculiar phenomena. A cargo run to the station was very sweet for the hauler crew, the station’s benefactor was known to be a big tipper. “There are dozens of mining settlements in the asteroid belt, why didn’t you call them and have them help?” I asked Turgeon and saw her young face crinkle in frustration, as though she were searching for the right words.

“It’s a delicate matter,” Fischer bailed her out. “If you accept this mission, you and your crew will be sworn to absolute secrecy, no one is to know of this.”

I raised an eyebrow, this was starting to get suspicious. “Actually, sir, my crew is what I wanted to talk to you about. My flight engineer was killed last night on the customs station.”

Fischer’s stern, rat-like mask crumpled for an instant at the news, but Turgeon looked unfazed, her eyes coolly looking back at me. “How did that happen?” Fischer asked.

“I don’t know, the local police are looking into it.”

Fischer shook his head, then shrugged. “No matter, you’ll just have to find a replacement, and Ms. Turgeon can always lend you a hand on the way to the Yellowknife.” I felt myself flush a little at the way Fischer casually tossed Gill’s death aside, as though it were too trivial for his notice. “As I said before, you are the best and we need the best for this.”

“Other than missing a crewman, there’s also the problem that I’ve never run a salvage operation, and my ship really isn’t equipped for it.”

“Gallowes, you don’t have to rebuild the Yellowknife, just patch it up and extract its cargo for delivery. A few welding drones and some hull plating are all you’ll really need.”

“OK, let’s say I decide to accept, what’s in it for me?”

“One hundred thousand unidollars,” Fischer answered, almost a little too quickly.

I could see from the gleam in his eye that whatever this cargo was, it was very valuable to Turgeon and her associates. Which probably meant that Fischer was going to get much more than a hundred thousand unibucks. Time to test the waters a little. “One million, and…” I paused dramatically, “I want sole ownership of the Poseyville.”

“Are you crazy? A million?” Fischer gasped, his tyrannical mask falling away to reveal the spoiled child that he was.

“Take it or I walk,” I replied as firmly as I could. I knew I was riding a thin line here. If I was wrong, then Fischer would have me fired and go with someone else. On the other hand, if I was right, then I and my crew would not only be much richer, but I would be free of Napoleon forever.

Fischer seemed to be torn for a moment between his greed and business sense. Finally, he sighed and said, “All right, Gallowes, you drive a hard bargain, I see now why you’re the best. A million and I’ll give you the Poseyville.” Fischer smiled, an expression that seemed alien to his face. “I assume that you’ll be changing the name?”

“You let me worry about that. So when does this party start?”

“I can have the welding drones and hull patches loaded on your ship in 48 hours.”

“Fine, I’ll let my pilot know, he and Ms. Turgeon can supervise the loading operation while I find us a new flight engineer.”

“Excellent,” Fischer said and I stood to leave. As I neared the door, Fischer called out, “Gallowes, remember that no one is to know of this. If I find out you told a soul, I’ll make sure you never deliver a cargo anywhere ever again.”

“I’d like to see you try,” I muttered on my way through the door.

There were official resources for a hauler captain looking for replacement crewmembers. There were employment agencies, trade guilds, unions, any of which could help me find an unemployed flight engineer in need of work. However, like most things, we hauler crews had our own unofficial hiring network, places where captains could recruit the very best, usually away from other captains. That had probably caused more deaths than accidents during a cargo run, but fortunately I knew how to be discreet.

The Red Lander was a bar nestled among several warehouses at the very edge of the New Freeland biodome, and was frequented by a lot of hauler crews. I walked through the door into the dark bar, the smell of various liquors, drugs, and body odors mingling into a smell that made part of me want to vomit, and made the other part feel at home. There was an empty stool at the scarred, pseudowood bar, I sat down and waited for a bartender to appear. An old, fat man sidled over to me, his eyes looking at me expectantly. I reached over to the bar’s wallet, transferring two hundred unibucks to the bartender’s account. “I’ll have a scotch…and some information.” The bartender checked the wallet and confirmed my identity before he poured my scotch and leaned towards me conspiratorially.

“What exactly are you looking for?” The barkeep asked.

“A flight engineer.”

The bartender shook his head, his heavy jowls dancing. “Can’t help you there.”

“Come on, Andy, I know you’ve got some information.”

Andy the barkeep seemed torn for a second, finally letting out a heavy sigh. “OK, I’ve got a name, one I’ve been saving for someone special. Take a look at this.” Andy, I don’t think I ever asked for his last name, produced a comcard from his apron. I activated the device and looked incredulously at the file of one James Sirvenski. After a few minutes of reading, I handed the comcard back to Andy and added an extra five hundred unibucks to his wallet. He nodded graciously, leaving me to drain my scotch before I dashed out the door.

Walking down the street, I could hardly believe my luck. Sirvenski was only nineteen, a dropout of the Mars Engineering Institute, but he had taken the flight engineer certification test a month ago. None of that interested me, what I found incredible were his test scores at MEI and on his certification test. The kid was absolutely brilliant, he had aced every test he had taken at MEI and had also passed the certification test without getting a single answer wrong. That was, without cheating, next to impossible, but somehow this kid had done it. The only thing more surprising was that he was still available.

It took two hours to flag down a taxi that could take me from New Freeland to the capital city of Melburne. The ride itself was another bumpy two hours that had my stomach ready to revolt by the time I stumbled out of the taxi and towards where James Sirvenski lived. Even without the address, I could still have found his place simply by following the gunshots. I patted my stun pistol reassuringly as I walked through dark, empty streets. It was clear that Sirvenski lived in the sort of neighborhood where sane people didn’t go out after dark. I took in a deep breath, forcing down my fear.

I eventually found the rotting shell of a flophouse where Sirvenski’s apartment was located. There were no signs to guide me, so I had to walk up and down the creaking stairs looking for the apartment leased to him. I finally located his apartment and knocked on the door, grimacing as a rat ran boldly over my boots to scurry into the mounds of garbage left in the hallways. As far as humans advanced, there were always places that were left untouched by progress.

The wooden door opened a half-inch, allowing me to just make out a gray eye. “Who are you?” A male voice demanded harshly.

“My name is Brent Gallowes, I’m looking for James Sirvenski…” I never finished the sentence, the door was flung open and a man slammed me against the wall, holding a knife to my throat. I felt the cold steel against my neck, the horrifying images of my past assailing me.

“Look, I’ve told your boss already that I’m not going to help him crack any security codes. So you can go back and tell him to find another patsy already!”

“No, you don’t understand,” I croaked, trying not to swallow too hard with the knife against my throat. “I’m not a criminal, I’m a hauler captain, I came to ask James if he wanted to be my flight engineer.”

I stared into the man’s gray eyes for a long moment, then I felt the knife pull away from my flesh. “James, who’s out there?” I heard an elderly voice ask.

“No one, Mother, I’ll just be a minute,” the man, who I now knew was Sirvenski, replied. He slammed the door shut, sheathing his weapon. “I’m sorry, but we don’t get a lot of visitors around here.”

I tenderly rubbed my throat, nodding, “I understand. Can we discuss this inside?”

Sirvenski shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, but I really can’t accept any job offers.”

“You took the certification test, I assumed…”

“My mother’s really sick, she can’t take care of herself, and my sisters are too young to run things. I have to be here for them, I’m sorry you wasted your time.”

Sirvenski turned to go, but I grabbed his arm. “Wait, I can get you out of here, all of you.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Sirvenski snorted. “I’ve had a dozen captains come around here all saying the same thing. ‘Sign with me and in ten years you’ll be a rich man.’ I’m sorry, but my family needs me, I can’t go off into space and leave them here.”

“If I might be so impolite as to pry, but why did you take the test if you don’t want a job?”

Sirvenski’s cheeks flushed. “I want a job, I really do, but I’ve got responsibilities.”

“OK, James, let me lay my cards on the table. I need a flight engineer in the next 24 hours, and you’re my best chance. This mission is really important, and I’ll need someone of your talent to help me, so name your price.”

“Look, Mr. Gallowes, I’m not for sale, really.”

I nodded, taking out my wallet. “How about ten thousand up front, another two hundred thousand when the mission is done.” I could see Sirvenski’s jaw drop, it was obvious that he hadn’t been expecting such a large sum to be offered to him. “What do you say?”

For a moment I thought he’d still refuse, but finally he nodded. “I accept. How long is this mission going to be?”

“Maybe two weeks,” I shrugged.

“I’ll need to find a place for my family to stay, you know any good hotels?”

“No, but we’ll find something.” I clapped Sirvenski on the back and we went inside so that he could break the good news. His three sisters, the oldest appeared to be fourteen or fifteen, jumped around gleefully while his mother lay on an old sofa, smiling through rotted teeth. I guessed that his mother was about my age, but she looked much older, whether from stress or whatever disease plagued her I wasn’t sure, but she seemed almost bedridden. Sirvenski knelt down next to her, taking her hand.

“Don’t worry, Mother, we’re going to take you somewhere to get better.”

“No, James, no, you can’t afford it…”

“Actually, ma’am, your son is now an employee of Fischer Galactic Transport and is fully insured,” I broke in. It was technically a lie, since he wasn’t yet enrolled in Fischer’s insurance plan, but I knew that Jorgen Fischer would give Mrs. Sirvenski a kidney right now if that’s what it took to get me on my way.

The Sirvenski family and I spent the rest of the night packing up their belongings, and by the next morning they had taken care of things with their slum lord. Sirvenski took his mother to the best hospital in the city for treatment while I found a hotel room for his sisters. He was leery about leaving his sisters alone, but after a short call to Jorgen Fischer a pair of bodyguards arrived, both gay men who would have no interest in taking advantage of the girls. After saying his farewells, Sirvenski and I boarded a shuttle bound for the Poseyville.

“Poseyville?” Sirvenski choked when he heard the name.

“Don’t worry, after this mission, I’m going to change the name.”

“So what is this

about? Where are we going?”

“I can’t tell you right now,” I replied a little more harshly then I intended.

“Oh.”

“Once we’re under way, then I’ll tell you. So, have you ever been on a hauler before?”

“A few times, my father was a hauler pilot.”

“Really? Which ship?”

“I don’t know, he died in a bar fight when I was twelve.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sirvenski’s eyes looked haunted for a moment, but he said nothing more.

“I’ve seen your test scores, they’re very good.”

“I know, I wish I could have finished at MEI, but I needed to make money for my family.”

“I understand how that is, I used to have a family myself,” I’m sure that now it was my eyes looking haunted to him. We were both silent the rest of the trip, thinking of our own tragedies.

It didn’t take long to show Sirvenski around the Poseyville. Other than the cargo hold there were the crew quarters, the galley, a few maintenance rooms, and the bridge. I introduced Sirvenski to Palmer and Turgeon, and almost to my relief, I watched Sirvenski also embarrass himself to our pretty young passenger. His face still blushing from being shot down by Turgeon, Sirvenski took his controls and began a diagnostic of the Poseyville’s systems. I took my station, reading over the cargo manifest for this mission.

True to his word, Fischer had sent four welding robots and almost enough spare hull plating to build a new hauler. It was pretty clear that Fischer wanted this mission to succeed, which only made me speculate at how much he stood to gain from this. I also began to wonder exactly what was so damned important that it could warrant so much profit, yet had to be kept absolutely secret. A lot of thoughts danced through my head, but there was really only one way to find out.

My chance to finally ask Turgeon came ten hours later when the Poseyville was finally clear of Mars and its moons. It would be another three hours until the hauler reached the asteroid belt, where I would have to get permission from the various mining companies in the belt to pass through their space. That was going to take a good deal of negotiating, and bribery. In the meantime, with some time to kill I decided to find out what I was getting my ship into.

Turgeon was squatting on a spare seat, uncomfortably staring out the vidscreen when I said, “All right, James, I promised that I would let you know about our mission later, it is now later. I think, though, that our good friend Ms. Turgeon could provide a better description than I.”

Turgeon glared in my direction, then nodded. “About three weeks ago, my ship, the Yellowknife, was bound for the Jovian Research Station. We were about four hours out from the asteroid belt, closing in on Jupiter when something struck the ship. I wasn’t on the bridge at the time, but after the impact I went up to the bridge to find out what was going on. Apparently something struck the ship on the port side of the cargo bay in the aft quarter. No one knew what it was, but it had punched a huge hole in the hull, we were lucky that none of our cargo was sucked out into space.”

“The problem was that with only an emergency force field patching the hole in the hull, there was no way that we could maneuver through the asteroids or make it past Jupiter without the hull buckling. We were essentially dead in space. So the captain decided to send me in a lifeboat to get help. I got to Mars about three days ago and met with Mr. Fischer to get help repairing the ship and salvaging the cargo.”

“So what exactly is it that hit you?” Sirvenski asked, fascinated by Turgeon’s story. I suspected, however, that he’d be fascinated by anything she said from the look on his face.

Turgeon shook her thick red mane, “I don’t know, I didn’t get a chance to see before I left.”

I could see from the nervous look in her eyes that she was lying. She knew more than she was letting on, but there was no sense in arguing about it now. I would make sure to get a good look at the damage when we arrived at the Yellowknife. “So the ship will be operational with a few minor repairs to the engine and hull?” I asked.

“That’s right,” she replied, turning away from me to effectively end the conversation. I thought about trying to get a little more out of her but decided against it. Instead, I went over to Sirvenski and discussed the ship’s control systems, getting any suggestions he had on how to improve them. As advertised, Sirvenski was a bright kid, it took him only an hour before he knew far more about the Poseyville’s systems than I ever would.

After talking with Sirvenski, I sat down at my station and opened a book, though I was really not interested in its contents. I watched Turgeon from over the book’s display surface , trying to pick up on any more pieces of the puzzle from her facial expressions or body language, but she was as cold and empty as space itself.

Chapter One

2007-06-12T13:27:00.001-07:00

Chapter One

People have this wonderful misconception of starship captains, fueled by glamorous holopics that show the heroic, bold captain standing tall as they battle evil aliens or space pirates or whatever other nonsense. A captain was believed to be like the sheriff back in the Wild West, bringing civilization to untamed lands like the colonies on the moon and Mars. In reality, most of us are just hard-working people, and truth be told, most of us are crooked as all hell.

In five years as a hauler captain, I’d done my own share of carrying illegal goods while on a legitimate cargo run. Another misconception is that smugglers are always suave conmen, carrying weapons or drugs to sell on the black market. In reality, the goods smuggled the most are fresh vegetables and fruits from Earth. After health inspections, tariffs, and local taxes, a single apple could cost well over three unidollars on the moon and twice that on the newer colony of Mars. We “smugglers” were actually doing the local populace a favor by selling fruit and vegetables directly on the black market. It was a system that benefited everyone: the growers on Earth, the smugglers delivering the goods, and the consumers buying the merchandise. The only ones not to benefit were the planetary governments who missed out on the tax revenues, but they more than made up for it in the high tariffs they charged on goods that came in legally.

Today’s cargo was predominantly a legal haul, mostly industrial machinery being sent from a big corporation on Earth to a subsidiary on Mars. Tucked away in my quarters were a few cases of bananas from the Brazil-Argentine Cooperative to be delivered to a black market buyer once my ship had gone through customs. A good captain always made a little extra room for profit, and I was no exception.

Most people snickered when I told them what I did for a living. A middle-aged man pushing fifty who had a doctorate in accounting just didn’t seem to fit the profile of a cargo hauler captain. The snickering usually stopped when people saw how successful my ship was. All those years in the business world had given me some useful training in how to make deals with suppliers, how to talk my way past custom inspectors, and how to expedite deliveries by greasing the right palms. In three years I had become one of Fischer Galactic Transport’s best, so that for the last two years I got the most lucrative cargoes.

A typical cargo hauler is basically a metal brick with engines in the back. Warships, liners, and personal spacecraft were all designed more aerodynamically, but a cargo hauler had no need for such amenities. The length of haulers varied, mine was about seven hundred meters with enough cargo capacity for fifteen hundred tons. That much cargo room left very little space for the crew, but fortunately a hauler only needed three people. Besides the captain, each hauler was required to have a pilot and a flight engineer.

My pilot, Brian Palmer, and my flight engineer, Murray Gill, had thirty years of hauler experience between them. They were two of the best on Fischer’s payroll, and I had been enormously lucky to have them assigned to my ship. Some of it was not luck so much as the company wanted a crew that could baby-sit someone as unqualified to command a hauler as I was. Over the years we had not grown into the Three Musketeers, but we got along well enough to make one of the best teams in Fischer Galactic Transport’s history.

It was Brian Palmer who spoke to me now. “Message coming in from Orbital Control.”

I looked up from the book I’d been reading, thinking to myself that it was about time they’d gotten to my ship. I’d been sitting just a few hundred kilometers outside of the Martian moon Phobos for three hours, waiting for an approach vector from the traffic controllers. Mars had only been colonized thirty years ago, but it was already a bustling hub of commercial traffic, which meant long delays for ships coming in. It didn’t help that the Martian traffic controllers were poorly trained and high, drunk, or both most of the time. “Let’s hear it,” I replied wearily.

“Poseyville, this is Orbital Control, you may approach on vector three-four-seven,” the controller commanded gruffly, his voice sounding as though he’d already gotten a few drinks in, even though it was only ten in the morning by Martian time.

“Control, this is Poseyville, we are beginning course correction burns now,” I responded, biting out the name of the ship like a curse. I had always hated the name of the hauler I’d been given command of, but until I could buy the ship from Fischer or get one of my own, I was stuck with it.

I watched Palmer type the course corrections into the navigation computer and felt the ship begin to move ever so slowly. Palmer regarded himself as a great pilot, and maybe he had been when with the United Nations Defense Alliance, but mostly a hauler pilot typed instructions into the computer and let the machine do all the work. I had tried my hand at piloting the Poseyville once or twice and found it was not too challenging. Still, it was best for everyone concerned not to bruise Palmer’s fragile ego too much.

It took well over an hour to make the necessary corrections and to slip into a docking berth at the customs station in Mars’ orbit. The station was a long, wide tube with hundreds of long pylons jutting out, ships connected to each pylon so that the whole thing looked like a giant metal bush floating in space. It took a few minutes for the airlock on the pylon to establish a connection with the Poseyville’s airlocks, a seamless fit was necessary or else someone could implode.

“Run a final check on our cargo and prepare to be entreated by a visit from our friends at Customs,” I said to flight engineer Murray Gill. Gill had been on haulers for almost twenty years now, he didn’t need me to tell him what to do, but I always had to go through proper procedures just in case someone at Fischer HQ was listening in. The company randomly bugged ships to test the competence of its crews, an invasion of privacy that they thought was necessary to maintain quality control, and maybe they were right.

“Yes, sir,” Gill replied crisply, his large frame waddling back towards the cargo hold to make a manual check of the crates we were carrying. While Gill was gone, Palmer and I worked to shut down all systems and make things ready for customs inspectors. After about a half hour, Gill returned and the airlocks finished aligning to allow the customs team on board.

I waited for them on the bridge; it was always better to let them nose around a little on their own to assuage their concerns. Had I gone to the airlock to greet them and escorted them to bridge, they probably would suspect that I was hiding something, so I just sat back and waited. Three men in blue jumpsuits finally appeared on the bridge, all three having a bleary look in their eyes and stubble on their chins. “Welcome to the Poseyville,” I began as innocently as I could. “What can we do for you gents today?”

“We’re just checking things out,” the inspector in the middle replied, his voice filled with the surliness of someone with a bad hangover.

“Here’s our cargo manifest, you’ll find it matches our inventory exactly,” I handed the inspectors a comcard that contained a detailed list of what was in the cargo hold.

“I’m sure it does,” the lead inspector grunted, reading over the manifest then handing me the comcard back. “Fine, you can start unloading your cargo. You realize of course that there are special fees for certain goods.”

I nodded to the inspector. In the case that the ship was bugged, the inspector was hinting that he wanted a bribe to forget about any illegal cargo we might have on board. They may have found the illegal goods I had hidden in my quarters, or more likely, they had simply guessed. I took the inspector’s wallet and transferred a hundred unidollars into the man’s account. He took the wallet back, stuffing it into a pocket without even looking. “Well, everything seems to be in order, then, Mr. Gallowes. You and your crew have a good day,” the inspector finished smugly before he and his two silent partners left.

Once they were out of the airlock, I turned to Palmer and Gill. “Murray, have the dockhands start to unload. When they’ve got things under control, you can make yourself scarce. Brian and I have business to attend to in the meantime.” Actually I had no idea if Palmer had any business to conduct, but I had to find my contact to sell the bananas I had smuggled aboard. For formality’s sake, though, I had to at least make things appear business-like. Gill nodded to me as I left, he knew the drill, and I’d expect to see him in Dodger’s Pub in about an hour. Palmer and I separated, going to our quarters to pack up our gear. We each had a cart stacked full of crates, though I wasn’t sure what Palmer had brought on board.

“Keep your relay active, so I can contact you when we get new orders,” I told Palmer as we walked down the pylon and into the customs station.

“Yeah, sure, you know me,” Palmer winked and then disappeared into a throng of people. I sighed, and then headed to find my contact and unload my shipment of bananas.

The customs station, while it looked like a bush, had rings like a tree on the inside. There were three rings to be exact. The innermost ring contained all of the station’s systems for power, water, air, and so on. The second ring was primarily for command and conference facilities, it was where Orbital Control was housed. The outer ring was the commercial area, by far the seediest of the three rings.

Back in my days as an accountant in Chicago, I would never have gone near such a place as the outer ring, but now days it was almost like home. My contact for the bananas was Hal Schneider, he ran an upscale electronics shop that served as a front for his more lucrative business. I steered my cart around a herd of busy travelers to the back of Schneider’s store, then rapped three times on the door, which was the signal that he had a “special” client. I waited impatiently for a few minutes, hand on the stun pistol at my hip just in case anyone tried to hijack my cargo. Fischer wouldn’t let its employees carry real weapons, the stun pistols were the only armaments they allowed aboard the ship. That policy was fine with me, I carried the same stun pistol I had bought when I started at Kovalchuk, Spezza, and Weiss to ward off any potential muggers. The stun pistol shot tiny darts that would in theory stop an attacker by disrupting their nervous system with an electrical charge. My stun pistol had only been fired three times since I had bought it, once by my son when he was trying to shoot some birds in the backyard, and twice on the shooting range, so I was not an expert marksman, but appearances were what counted.

Finally, Schneider appeared at the back door, his dark face splitting into a broad smile. “Gallowes, I wasn’t expecting you!”

“Well, I was in the neighborhood,” I replied lamely.

“So what have you brought?” Schneider asked as he inspected the crates.

“Bananas fresh from Braziltina.”

Schneider nodded, motioning for me to open a crate. I entered an access code onto the side of one of the boxes, the top popping to reveal the golden booty within. Schneider picked up one of the bananas, studying it carefully, like a jeweler examining the cut of a diamond. He finally cracked open the peel, breaking off a piece and popping it into his mouth. He chewed melodramatically for a few moments, then a smile slowly spread across his face. “I see I continue to underestimate you, Gallowes, these are pristine.”

“Five cases all like it.”

Schneider’s face turned solemn. “Usually I check the entire shipment, but you’ve never steered me wrong before. So how much do you want?”

“Two thousand and a case of Ebbett’s.”

Schneider looked ready to argue, but finally he nodded. He knew how much his suppliers on the surface would pay, and how much their customers would pay for fresh fruit. “You drive a hard bargain, but a fair one. It just so happens I have a case of Ebbett’s in the back room right now. Perhaps you’ll have a drink with me?”

“Maybe some other time,” I answered, giving Schneider my wallet. He dumped two thousand unidollars into my account then took the cart inside. He returned a few minutes later with a single small case on the cart, a case of Ebbett’s, which produced the finest scotch in the Solar System. “Thanks, Hal, I’ll be sure to drop by the next time I come in.”

“Of course, Gallowes, you are always welcome here.” I took the cart and started towards the flats Fischer rented for use by its employees while they were at the station. The entire trip I kept the case of scotch in sight, it was even more valuable than the bananas, easily worth fifteen hundred unidollars.

I brushed past the dozens of saloons, whorehouses, and the like, my mind long-since numb to the debauchery that went on in those places. I peeked in Dodger’s Pub for a moment, finding Gill at the bar with a pair of women, most likely hookers he was planning to take back to his flat later. I didn’t bother to interrupt him and ask how the unloading operations were going, Gill was experienced enough not to leave the ship’s cargo in the hands of incompetents.

I continued on through dark promenades lit only by tawdry neon lights advertising any kind of sexual experience a human might be interested in. Finally, I came to the office of the Nebula Lodge and checked into my usual room. Fortunately, an automated innkeeper handled check-ins, so there was no one to eye my case of scotch or to ask what my intentions were.

The room that I used was probably the least disgusting in the entire building. It was not because I didn’t make a mess, in fact I usually left the place in a shambles, but because I paid a maid to keep the place clean in my absence. The last thing I wanted was to flop onto the bed and into a puddle of someone’s vomit, or even worse things. I flipped on the light, a single old fluorescent bulb providing the entire room with a dim glow. I carefully landed the cart on the floor, kneeling down to crack open the case of Ebbett’s. I took out one bottle, staring for a moment at the amber liquid in silent longing. After opening the bottle carefully, I took a long pull, feeling the familiar burn rolling down my throat, dulling my senses.

I sat down on the queen-size bed, grabbing a vial of pills from my left breast pocket. The drug was called Lexmafil, it’s not only a common drug for spacesickness, but also a powerful tranquilizer. Three pills and a half bottle of scotch later, I was comfortably resting in bed, my mind too numb to think of anything, too numb to conjure images of my butchered family. I simply lay in bed, tears silently running down my cheeks as I stared at the blank vidscreen.

On the ship, during a run, I was able to keep myself together, with a little help from the Lexmafil. I usually had enough other things to think about that I could keep the memories of Becky and Steve in the back of my mind. When I was alone, though, those memories would come roaring back to my consciousness. The only way to escape them, to escape the pain they caused, was to drown it in an avalanche of booze and pills.

Even in my stupor I would sometimes bitterly ponder the world around me. What a cold, cruel place the universe was, the universe that would kill a good woman like my wife while the scum that butchered her was allowed to remain free. At one time I had been a Christian, but after Becky and Steve were killed I lost all faith in any higher powers. The kind of god that could be so heartless, so sadistic as to allow my family to die while the killer received no punishment was not one I wanted to believe in. For hours at a time I would just sit on the bed, staring into space, cursing everyone and wondering why I bothered going on with my life.

I’d contemplated suicide numerous times, sometimes even going so far as to have the bottle of pills poised on the edge of my lips, but I could never go through with it. Maybe it was cowardice, maybe it was stubborn pride that I would not give the cosmic powers the satisfaction of completely breaking my spirit, or maybe there was some guardian angel looking out for me. No matter the reason, even while I thought of how unfair life is and tears coursed down my cheeks, I couldn’t bring myself to end it all.

On this night I lay in bed for hours, staring and trying not to think, downing two bottles of scotch and six Lexmafil pills before I drifted off into sleep. Even with the booze and drugs, my dreams were the one place where I could never get any respite from the events of that winter night. Every night it was the same, horrible nightmare that tormented me.

I was in my home in Chicago, climbing up the stairs to the bedroom. It was dark, I could barely see anything around me, but then there was a scream, Becky calling out to me. I tried to climb the stairs faster, but something seemed to be holding me back, so that I had to fight my way up the stairs, my wife screaming all the while. I reached the top and entered the bedroom to find the assailant on top of my wife’s naked body, a knife gleaming silver in his hand. I tried to run to Becky’s aid, but I was held in place, only able to watch as the killer’s blade arced down time and time again, tearing open my wife’s flesh until the knife was drenched in blood. I could only stand by helplessly as the life faded from Becky with each thrust of the silver blade. Finally, after it seemed as though every inch of her naked flesh was coated red with blood, the killer looked up towards me. The murderer came towards me, his entire body nothing more than a shadow. He approached slowly, his hands reaching up to pull off whatever mask he was wearing so that I could see who he was. Just as I was about to make out his face, to see who had done this terrible thing, I woke up in a cold sweat.

For a moment I just stared blankly at the walls of the room, trying to piece myself back together, when I realized that my relay was going off, my groggy mind slow to respond to the tiny device’s insistent beeping. I clumsily activated the relay, the room’s vidscreen coming to life to show Palmer’s face, looking pale and haggard. “Brian, what is it?” I slurred.

“It’s Murray…he’s dead,” Palmer replied.

I reached Murray’s room at the Nebula Lodge five minutes later, just long enough to take a pull of scotch and to put on a fresh jumpsuit. A pair of station security guards were in the room, examining the scene, bringing my mind back to the night when I had come home to find Becky and Steve dead, my entire body shaking at the memories. There were a couple similarities between Gill’s murder and that of my family over five years ago. Gill had been stabbed numerous times in the chest, and there was not a trace of the killer. The security guards were far less professional than Detective Sedin had been, they had me identify the body then asked a few basic questions. I tried to answer as best I could, but I had no idea who would want to kill Murray Gill or for what reason. I described the two women I had seen him with earlier, but that was sure to be a dead end, there were hundreds of hookers on the station, it would be hard to track down two of them. After that, I met Palmer outside and we went to a little café to sober up with a pot of coffee.

“I don’t get it, I just swung by his room to see if he’d had any problems with the cargo, and he was just lying on the bed, all cut up,” Palmer began, shaking his head. “It doesn’t make sense, who’d want to kill Murray?”

“I don’t know, maybe it was one of the dockhands, or one of the hookers he was with,” I suggested, the coffee not doing much to erase the fogginess in my brain.

“You really think a hooker could do that?”

“Maybe, or for all we know it was just a random robbery.”

Palmer nodded, a frown creasing his face. “Yeah, you may be right. There are all kinds of whackos on this station. So what do we do now?”

“We’ll have to contact Fischer and get a replacement.” As I finished speaking, my relay beeped. I activated the device’s tiny mobile screen, the thin, rat-like face of Jorgen Fischer appearing.

“Gallowes, I want your ass on the ground ASAP!”

“But sir, we’ve…”

“I don’t care, Gallowes, I want you here, now!” The signal broke off and I shrugged to Palmer.

“Well, looks like I’ll get to ask Fischer for a replacement in person.”

Prologue

2007-06-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

Prologue

It didn’t rain that day. In all of the holopics I’d seen as a kid, it always rained at the funeral when there was a death in the family. Watching my wife and son being buried, though, there was not even a cloud in the sky. It was as though the cosmic powers-that-be were mocking me, telling me that the loss of my family didn’t even rate a few waterworks. I wanted to shake my fist at the air and scream until my throat was hoarse about how unfair it all was, but I forced myself to stay composed around all of the guests.

To be honest, I can’t even remember much of the funeral ceremony. My wife’s brother gave the eulogy about how long he had known Becky and all the good times they’d had. The priest gave a long sermon about how my son Steven was going to be so happy in Heaven, which gave my grief-addled brain little comfort. I held my tears in for most of the funeral, but when the caskets were finally set into the ground I wept like a little child, knowing that now they were gone forever.

Some people patted me on the shoulder, trying to comfort me, but their words had no effect. There was nothing anyone could say to ease the pain, even if Becky and Steve’s ghosts had come back to whisper sweet words in my ear, it still wouldn’t have helped. For twenty years Becky had been my life, ten-year-old Steven our greatest accomplishment, and now all of that was gone. Gone, and for no reason at all.

That night is still as vivid today as when it happened. It was just another wintry Chicago night, I was going to my suburban home after a twelve-hour workday. Of course, every podway from downtown Chicago to Oak Park was blocked with traffic getting on and off, accidents adding to the chaos. It was hard to think that while I was sitting comfortably in my transit pod, reading the business reports on the pod’s vidscreen, Becky and Steve were being butchered by an intruder.

There were no witnesses to the murder, no one knew who the intruder was, or what their intention was, but by the time I got home, police were swarming over my house. “Sir, no one is allowed in there,” an officer said flatly when I tried to break through the mobile force field to get into the house to see what was happening.

“This is my house!” I shouted louder than I intended to. I tossed my wallet to the officer and waited impatiently while he scanned my ID card and received confirmation that I was, indeed, the owner of the house.

“I’ll have someone escort you, Mr. Gallowes.” The officer motioned to a female officer, a fresh-faced kid who didn’t even look old enough to be on the police force.

“I’m Officer Vanessa Housley, sir. Follow me, please,” she squeaked. I followed Housley into my house, feeling my stomach turning cold when I saw blood leading up the stairs. I bolted from the stairs, following the trail of blood to the living room, a once-familiar place that now seemed like another world. Police officers were everywhere, scanning for clues in thin plastic suits that would prevent them from leaving any DNA evidence that could contaminate the crime scene. I stared at the spectacle for a moment, until Housley grabbed my arm and tugged me towards the stairs. “Come on, sir,” she said quietly.

We went up the stairs, another mob of police were near the bedroom door, parting like the Red Sea when a paramedic team came through with a shrouded stretcher.

“Oh my God!” I shouted, running to the side of the stretcher and pulling back the shroud before anyone could stop me. I saw Becky’s cold, dead face stained with blood, counting almost a dozen gashes along her chest and arms. “What the hell happened?”

A man about my age in a gray suit appeared from the bedroom, extending his hand, which I shook limply. “Mr. Gallowes, I’m Detective Lamont Sedin. I’d like to talk with you privately, if I may.” I nodded, numbly following Sedin into the guest room and sat down on the bed, wringing my hands nervously just to do something with them. “Mr. Gallowes, we only arrived an hour ago, but it looks as though both your wife and son were murdered in what we believe to be a botched robbery attempt.”

“They killed Steve too?” I asked in shock.

Sedin’s eyes were filled with genuine sorrow. “Yes, sir. We found both bodies in the bathroom of the master bedroom. They were both cut up pretty bad.” I could see that Sedin regretted giving me so much information, tears dripping down my face like twin waterfalls as I thought of my little boy. The last time I had seen him was that morning before I went to work, he was still in bed, but I felt him stir when I kissed him on the forehead. Now, I would never be able to kiss him again.

“What happened?” I asked slowly, my mind trying to comprehend what was happening.

“We believe that the initial struggle was in the living room, but then your wife and son retreated up the stairs to the bathroom. Operators received a call from your wife, but before they could get much information the killer entered the bathroom and…” Sedin’s voice trailed off, I could see that he wasn’t quite sure how to finish the sentence without upsetting me.

“It’s OK, I understand,” I whispered. “You…you think it was a robbery?”

“We’ll have to have you inspect the house later, but it appeared as though some electronics were removed.”

“It doesn’t make sense, it wasn’t even nine o’clock…”

“I know, sir, but crime doesn’t have to make sense.” Sedin shook his head sadly, “Whoever did this could have been on drugs, or they may not have been mentally stable to begin with. I’m sorry I can’t give you more answers, but I have officers looking for the perpetrator right now, although it will be hard to find them until we have a description.”

“So you don’t know who did it?” I asked incredulously. On the holopics it was always so easy, the officers would find a hair, part of a footprint, something that would lead them to the killer in just under an hour. It was a rude awakening for me to find out that real life policework was far different. “There must be some clue…”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’ll keep looking. I have a son of my own, you can rest assured that I will do everything I can to bring whoever did this to justice. Every officer for fifty kilometers will be looking for this person, and it’s going to be hard for them to hide with clothes and a knife stained with blood.”

“I’m sorry, Detective, I just…I just can’t believe this…” I stopped, breaking down into uncontrollable sobs, the loss only now fully hitting me. Sedin left me on the bed, and eventually Officer Housley came to take me to a hotel to stay in while my house was a crime scene.

Despite what Sedin had said, the killer never was found, nor was the murder weapon ever recovered. It burned me every morning to think that while I was planning to bury the two most important people to me, the one who had performed the horrible deed was walking free. It was the first time I had to look reality in the face and realize how utterly cold and harsh life was. As cold as the bodies being laid into the ground…

After the funeral, things become hazy, but I remember a little bit of what happened over the next nine months. I stayed in the hotel room provided by the police for another two weeks, then somehow I found my way back to my house. I never went back to work at Kovalchuk, Spezza, and Weiss, eventually the senior partners stopped calling and co-workers stopped trying to come by the house. I was inevitably fired in absentia, but I didn’t care, I only sat in the guest room of my house, drinking and staring blankly at the walls, hoping for some kind of release from all the pain I felt.

I was probably a good month into my drunken stupor when Officer Housley stopped by the house. Apparently my friends and neighbors thought that I’d committed suicide and called the police to come in and check, since I’d scramble-locked every door and window so that only I, or emergency personnel, could have access. I heard her footsteps coming up the stairs, but I didn’t try to clean up or hide the disgusting state I was in. I simply sat on the bed, nursing a bottle of scotch and staring at the wall. I barely even turned my head when the door opened and Housley called softly, “Mr. Gallowes?”

I didn’t reply, I just took another pull from the bottle, giving Housley a brief once-over. She was a pretty girl with a thin, well-built body, long auburn hair, and sparkling hazel eyes, a woman much too beautiful to be wasting her life with such a dangerous, low-paying career. “You come to arrest me?” I slurred.

Housley took a look around the room, shaking her head. “Your neighbors were worried about you, sir. They thought that something might have happened to you. Why don’t you get dressed and we can get you some help…”

“Help? If you want to help, why don’t you find who killed my wife and son!” I roared, jumping up from the bed to stand only inches from Housley. I could see her eyes go wide, one arm scrambling to her hip to take out her pistol.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re doing all we can,” Housley stammered.

“Well it’s not enough, damn it!” Spittle flew from my mouth as I shouted, drops of it pasting onto Housley’s face, but she appeared too shaken to even wipe it off.

“Please, Mr. Gallowes, just come with me. I’m sure we can find someone you can talk to about this.”

I threw my bottle of scotch against the wall, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I reared up to my full height, my entire body pulsing with rage. “I don’t need someone to talk to! I don’t need your fucking pity or your fucking counselors, I need justice for my family!”

Housley took a step backward, I could see the fear on her young face. “Mr. Gallowes, if you don’t come with me then I’ll have to…”

“You’ll have to what?” I demanded, laughing mockingly. “Arrest me? For what, drinking in my guest bedroom? The windows are closed, no one can see me, and I haven’t done anything dangerous to myself or anyone else, so why don’t you get the fuck out of my house already!”

For a moment it seemed that Housley would protest further, but she stopped. There were no charges that she could book me on, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Until I became drunk publicly or showed that I was a danger to myself or others, her hands were tied. Finally, she whispered, “I’m sorry, sir.” Housley disappeared out of the room, her footsteps slowly echoing down the stairs. She was the last guest I would entertain in my home.

The great thing about digital commerce was that for nine months I could just sit in my underwear stone-drunk. Bills were automatically deducted from my credit account, my fifteen years as a certified public accountant building up more than enough of a nest egg to cover my expenses until I was sixty. I did not even have to go out to buy alcohol, I simply pressed a few buttons and after waiting a couple of minutes, a bottle would shoot through the requisition tube and appear in my kitchen. I could just waste away in my home with nothing to snap me out of it.

Eventually, though, I did come to my senses. It would be nice to say what exactly brought me around, what had penetrated my alcohol-glazed brain to give me a renewed sense of purpose, but I have no idea. Maybe I got sick of the smell of my own vomit on the guest room carpet, maybe I got tired of seeing my haggard reflection in the mirror, maybe I could not longer stand the cold feeling I got when I looked down the hall to where I knew my wife and son had been slain, maybe it was simply divine intervention, but one day I got dressed, packed a suitcase, and sold the house to a realty agent who would eventually resell the fully-furnished home to some other happy couple. Before I had even given it any thought, I was on a liner bound for Mars and the Fischer Galactic Transport Company.

I enrolled immediately in their training program to become a cargo hauler captain. I was old at forty-three, out of shape, and had no training in space travel or piloting, but I had money and that was all that really mattered. After a two-month training course I went from Brent Gallowes, PhD to Brent Gallowes, starship captain. It was the start of a whole new life, but a life still filled with the pain of what had happened one winter night, every time I looked at that shiny blue beacon called Earth.