Soundless Conflicts

by S. Walker

  Twelve other pilots waited with him, crammed chest to back into an airlock meant for five. It was beyond claustrophobic: His chest felt cramped, lungs unable to expand enough to draw breath. Squirming was pointless; every inch of space he gained was a vacuum someone else filled with an elbow. A hip. A knee. They were packed in so tight the neck seal on the skinsuit in front of his was slowly gouging a line across his faceplate. It joined a cutting block's worth of other slashes, some so deep it was a wonder the suit held pressure at all.

  His skin felt fear-slick under the suit, rank and rashy from constant terror and too little washing. Itches everywhere: The crevice of each toe, behind his knees, crook of an elbow. Chest and neck crawling with imaginary bugs. Something twitched on his cheekbone. Maybe imaginary, maybe not. He squinted anyways, rubbing hard against the faceplate. It left an oily smear. Good enough.

  They waited in airless timeout, but that didn't mean it was quiet. Aldi could feel the deck vibrating beneath his boots, shocks and explosions tapping both soles with an irregular rhythm. He could hear his own breathing, mouth open in a gulping rattle of not-enough-air. Pressed helmet to helmet like this he could even hear low vibrations, transmitted through shared suit contact. Conversations from the other pilots as they said goodbye, told loved ones to hold on, begged to go back inside.

  The man in front of him was chanting quietly, without the embarrassment of engaging the radio for everyone to hear. It sounded like names. He was probably going insane.

  That was fine.

  Every indicator light on his skinsuit suddenly lit up, then burned out with a smell like shorted electronics. Aldi wanted to feel surprised, or angry, or worried, but couldn't muster enough energy to get started. Everyone's suit was secondhand, busted, desperately patched by sleep deprived techs with next to no training. If it worked at all was a miracle. If it worked long enough to get to a ship you were blessed.

  The station broadcast came on, panicked systems controllers screaming over their suit speakers to get ready get ready get ready. Well, not his speakers: They were crispy piles of melted wires along with everything else in his suit. But he borrowed the notice from others' radios, more feeling than hearing it through direct contact.

  Everyone suddenly tensed, all at once in a space not big enough to handle expansion. It felt like a giant hand squeezing the air out him from every side. He had time to wheeze once in panic, lungs straining.

  Then the airlock blew.

  Thirteen skinsuited pilots ragdolled into space on an overpressure wave, caught in a haze of frozen vapor that obscured everything. Aldi spun wildly, screaming into the dead faceplate for an eternity until the belt tether caught, doubling him in half with an 'oof' before whipping him in an arc onto the station hull. He bounced once off the surface, scrambling for a hold, then took a boot to the neck as another pilot's tether crashed them together. The rebound gave Aldi a second chance to catch a grip, gloved fingers hooking onto a bent antenna mounting. He clutched it hard enough to feel knuckles pop, just in time to take a second hit from a flailing suit. This time he grabbed the man back, pivoting around his anchor to smash them both into the hull a second time.

  It probably hurt like hell. But it gave the pilot time to grab something. An opaque faceplate looked at Aldi for a moment, perhaps thanking him over the radio. He couldn't hear it, so he waved a free arm instead. Then he looked outward, away from his one-armed grip on the station hull and nearly threw up.

  Hell crawled over the station skin.

  Corporate living station Price Fixing was a massive facility, thirty miles in diameter and built in two groups of circular segments like stacked plates. Their smaller top plate rested on the broader one below, creating a dropoff five decks high that eventually angled outwards again. The half mile wide difference between the two plate diameters created a shelf going all the way around, regularly studded with everything from docking bays to sensor arrays. At full capacity nearly three hundred shuttles could dock at once, carrying cargo or personnel on- and off-station in a choreographed dance.

  From where Aldi floated he could see half of the Fixing's entire docking arc, outlined brilliantly against the system's primary star. It should have been a chaos of shuttles, patiently orbiting haulers and teeming autolifters. But instead of square, ugly cargo units the entire upper surface of the station swarmed with... things.

  Metallic, roughly triangular and five inches thick, they spun and flipped across the station skin on whip-fast cables that snapped from each corner. Easily a hundred thousand of the foot-long machines, squirming around and over each other in a dizzying ball of motion that somehow seemed purposeful. They carpeted the top of the hull in every direction, pouring through holes in the station like maggots on rotten meat and carrying materials as they went.

  Station Admin called them attack drones, in a single hurried briefing given before cramming everyone into an airlock. Aldi remembered wondering how the hell something as simple as a drone could be destroying a station as big as the Fixing. It seemed absurd. But Management was taking it deadly serious and by that point he'd already endured weeks of lockdowns and mandatory relocations. Residents doubling up, then tripling, then practically living on each other in a vacuum of official information. Station information networks crashing, or sanitized so thoroughly no one knew what was going on.

  But the rumors circulated, free of Corporate information control. People talked of hostile takeovers. Invasions from incoming ships. Whole arcs of station habitation blown out into vacuum. Docks overrun. Haulers scrambling to depart as boarders claimed control, seizing vessels. Even entire warships embattled, drifting through the system while they fought an unknown enemy.

  The population nearly rioted when station Management began forcefully rounding up workers into ad-hoc Security groups, posting each at far-flung access centers across the station. But anger turned to fear when only a fraction of those groups came back, bloodied and telling stories of skittering metallic beasts and scything cables in the dark between corridors. That confirmed the rumors. It was real. Something was on the station with them.

  And they were losing.

  Those in the know (or with connections) quietly felt out the possibility of escape. Just break worker contracts, find a ship and head out. Eat the sanctions and penalties. But they quickly found there was no way off the Price Fixing: No ships arriving, none scheduled to leave. Every single dock on the station's outward ring was a hazard zone, locked down and impossible to operate.

  That was when Aldi started seriously worrying. He lived with the philosophy that things could always get worse so it was important to be thankful for what he had. It was a good way to live, he figured. Meal vouchers sanctioned? It could be worse-- some people didn't even get vouchers. Entertainment feeds cut for seditious activity? Could be worse; some living zones got regularly raided. Aldi moved through life taking position after position, always getting by or making do, finding happiness in the moments between. And there was happiness: It was there to be found. If he lowered expectations far enough.

  Living on the eclectic edge naturally lent Aldi a wide spectrum of "just useful enough" certifications. If dock work became available he'd take a cargo lifter test and qualify. Work a few months there, until someone more qualified came along. Then he'd drift off, orbiting the communal recreation areas until word of a shortage came his way. That was another area where super low expectations helped: He could maintain friendships with just about anyone, without even the trivial demands acquaintances tend to place on each other.

  In fact, that was how he'd become pilot certified. The rumor grapevine threw a hint his way while Aldi was between jobs. Within hours he was at the Admin area checking in for a pilot certification, looking for a temporary working contract.

  The receptionist-- a middle aged type, slightly thick with hair in a bun so severe it doubled as a fetish-- hadn't been impressed. She'd looked him over from the secondhand shoes up to his fourth hand jacket, then sniffed just once like the smell o
f communal living was offensive. Then a cheap handheld console made an appearance on the desk for him to pick up. "Minimum score to qualify for training is ninety out of a hundred." Poor lady sounded bored and expecting less than nothing. Aldi approved. "Anything above ninety five qualifies for reduced-cost employment."

  He'd nodded, took the tablet and did the entire two hundred question exam standing in front of her desk. It took nearly an hour, but that was fine. Low standards meant a lot of standing around without furniture (or laying down without it). When his score came back in the 99th percentile Aldi just handed the tablet back, smiled through her surprised doubletake and asked when she got off shift. Because he knew a good place to eat, liked interesting conversation and wanted someone to share a new position with...

  Low expectations made for a lot of friendly encounters.

  That was how Aldi ended up spending most of a year navigating low-speed cargo haulers around the Price Fixing's docking spaces. Two shifts a day, six hours each, doing painfully slow flights between enormous ship haulers and comparatively small station docks. Transferring hundreds of tons of dry goods or thousands of Agro animals at a time.

  Some of the temporary pilots quit, frustrated or driven to distraction by endless space and walking-speed docking shuttles. Not Aldi. He never had high expectations for his time, so every task was good enough. When the contract was up he'd simply drift off to the next thing... and hopefully the next appreciative receptionist.

  Which came full circle when station Security showed up in the overcrowded communal area, interviewing packed-together refugees for anyone with a pilot certification. Wrist IDs were checked, faces scanned and certifications pulled. When they got around to Aldi's little blanketed-off area the console lit up like a star, scrolling certifications completely off the screen for everything from waste processing to hauler pilot. The Management exec-- youngish and still desperately trying to grow in an authoritative goatee-- actually ran Aldi's ID twice, then took a second console off his team to confirm results independently. It didn't improve his mood at all. "Huh. Why didn't you volunteer sooner," he accused. Thin whiskers bristled angrily. "We've been calling for pilots for three days!"

  Aldi put forth the opinion that the ones doing the asking would benefit from being more open minded about results (and perhaps more attractive). This earned him a shocker round to the sternum from a disgruntled Security member, dropping him onto the deck in a spastic heap. Which was unexpected. But it could have been worse: They could have forced him into contracted service.

  Retroactively speaking the press-ganging afterward shouldn't have been such a surprise.

  After that Aldi found himself stuffed into a briefing room too small for everyone to sit in, waiting through a hurried lecture on something called "VIP Asset Relocation". This quickly turned out to be a presentation on how to quickly exit an airlock (explosive decompression) followed by the best strategies to cross the outside of the Price Fixing's hull in the direction of some uncrewed haulers currently undocked on stationary orbits ("grab anything you can" featured prominently).

  It wasn't until a harried technician in charge of the presentation reached the part about leaping off the station hull into a collision course with the orbiting haulers that Aldi decided his personal standard for bullshit had been reached. He stepped away from the wall, passed a stick of candy to the nice guy on his left and then ambled toward the hatch. Anything was better than leaping through vacuum without a safety line, hoping enough people landed on a hauler to navigate it back for an Executive evacuation.

  The room was treated to several minutes of shocker rounds applied to a spasming sometimes-pilot.

  When Aldi regained enough motor control to pay attention again he caught the back half of an explanation about the drones attacking the station. But he'd been out of it and in a lot of pain. Besides: No matter how bad it was, it could always be worse.

  He was staring at the worst now.

  In fact the entire station hull was writhing with The Worst. The Worst surrounded them, occupying every docking bay along the outer rim and eating inwards. Those forcible relocations over the last few weeks suddenly made a lot more sense-- nothing much existed beyond a mile from station center anymore: It was all undergoing intense disassembling and repurposing into new triangular drones.

  Aldi would have stayed rooted in horror until the metal tide came in if someone hadn't slapped him on the shoulder. A surprised twitch nearly sent him flying directly off the hull; only a desperate snatch caught the handhold just in time. He rotated in place, heart hammering and eyes wide for an attack, but it was just the other pilot in their mismatched suit. They were urgently motioning inwards, towards the center of the station disc. At least that's what it looked like-- it was hard to see through Aldi's smeared, deeply scratched visor.

  But he got the message: Move or die.

  Death being one of the lowest expectations, Aldi decided moving was better. It helped that every glance behind him seemed to draw the things forward faster.

  They took off together, angling randomly between a forest of antenna and equipment mounts. Aldi didn't know what half of the machinery encrusted on the station hull was for but at the moment he wished very hard for all of it to go away and give him a clear shot to the meetup point. If it wasn't for the other skinsuited pilot he would have already bounced off several pieces and floated into the void; they rescued each other half a dozen times before the halfway point. Aldi decided right there that whatever their real name was, this was now a Friendly Suit.

  Meetup went badly. Aldi squinted and turned his faceplate around, counting other mobile figures and coming up a half-dozen short. He checked again, just to make sure, then held up seven fingers and threw both arms up in a 'what the hell?' emote. One of the larger skinsuits just pointed behind them, up and slightly away to where small figures drifted off into space.

  That bothered Aldi. A lot. It bothered him more when the same big-suited figure pointed directly outwards at the distant cargo ships, currently powered down and waiting in stationary orbit. The nearest had to be a mile away, easy, and that was a mile of empty space. No tether, no handholds, small targets and infinite ways to miss. He was trying very hard to think of How It Could Be Worse and drawing absolute blanks.

  Then the big suit reached behind himself, pulling out a shocker pistol. He pointed the weapon at the other six suited figures, then aimed at the ships drifting in the cold distance. Then he did it again: Weapon trained on them. Then the ships.

  Gun Man's implication was pretty clear: Jump or die.

  Ah. This was how it could be worse.

  Their first try was an immediate failure. Either fear or nerves got to the man, sending the poor suited figure off-course immediately. They watched as terror took hold a second later, sending him into a spasm that spun endlessly around his center of mass. A human cannonball, less than forty feet away but already too remote to ever save.

  The second person tried being smarter-- he tied his suit tether to the station, pointing to it and then to the nearest person, miming unclipping the tether. Save me if I fuck up, but unclip if it looks good. Aldi thought that was a hell of a good plan. Sensible. Worth repeating. He kept right on thinking that as Tether Man jumped off the hull, then stopped believing when his friend fucked up the unclip and hit the release far too late. Instead of sailing to victory Tether Man reached the end of his line and jerked, then spun as the line came unmoored. Rebound momentum sent him off at a slight angle away from ever finding a solid surface again for the rest of his short life.

  Aldi had never been more grateful for a broken radio in his life.

  Gun Man made Clip Fuckup jump next, angrily thrusting the weapon into their faceplate and counting down with his fingers. Five, four, three-

  Fuckup jumped for it, arms straight up like he was diving into the void. Everyone watched his trajectory for a long minute, then silently cheered when it looked like he was on course. That was a good jump; he had a hell of a chance to
make it. Whether he bounced off or not at the other end was a different story. But it was a good enough technique that the fourth person copied his strategy, crouching down and then diving outwards with hopeful arms.

  Then the weapon was in Aldi's faceplate. It was very unfortunate his skinsuit recycler wasn't accepting deposits: Taking off his boots was going to be a waterfall later on.

  "Okay. Shit." He crouched, staring desperately outward. His damn faceplate was a mess, he could barely see. What was the best strategy here? Should he dive? Push off hard, or soft? He had an old knee injury on the left, was it weaker? Maybe he should push off harder with that leg. "Dead stars, that hauler is smaller than my palm, how the hell can anyone hit that?!" Maybe he should try the second guy's strategy and use his suit tether-