by Matt Thomas
Norse Control could not have been more right. Lind had stopped the breach, and faster medical care could not revive his partner. An emergency halted all other traffic around the station, tearing up schedules and creating confusion. Lind could not care. He needed to get out of the tomb. Kay's body and every relic of his existence left on the ship had to disappear. Extending that moment for even thirty minutes longer than necessary would push Lind over the edge. Kay wouldn't have hesitated to do the same.
"Roger, Mako Three-Two-Two-Zero." The voice replied, more irritated than resigned. The screen changed waypoints, showing a more direct route to an outlying facility. "We can route you to a dry dock and push out a recovery team, but I can't guarantee they'll be there when you arrive."
At least he could get off of his ship and catch a shuttle away from the body. "Thanks. I appreciate it."
CHAPTER TWO
Alcohol took precedence over exhaustion. The night Lind spent in the station's hotel, or more precisely the station bar, irritated more than refreshed him. Waking up with the heavy stinging in his eyes and twilight consciousness marinated in the after-taste of bourbon, he cursed the small room he found himself in. After years of sleeping on the space-efficient mattress on his ship, he developed unreasonably strong opinions about beds. Had he been on Ceres Station or The Hub, he could have sought other options, but on the glorified pit stop on the edge of Saturn's influence a mere twenty rooms offered little to the selective. Just like the one bar that sat in the middle of the small food court, where Lind had paid exorbitant prices for mediocre bourbon over five hours, listening to recorded music and watching the handful of other patrons stare at him, the stranger in their midst. Given any option at all, he would have spent his time and money elsewhere.
Norse Station, unlike many industrial hubs, grew specifically as a rest stop, a gateway to the Saturnian system for the large transports hauling between the planets. It orbited its own planet always remaining on the sunward side. The planet itself, even as a gas giant, looked no larger than the moon did from Earth, with only the thinnest crescent of rings visible as the station look at the thin bands almost edge-on. Lind preferred the view from his ship
Still, the glorified rest stop provided critical morale boosts to those who passed through. Crews stopped off after months-long journeys from inside the solar system, or on their way back out of Saturn's orbit. There, they restocked food, water, and supplies. Most of them got drunk in the bar Lind spent the evening in, or found physical comfort when L2H, the provider of all things service related, had a supply available. Lamb, Higley & Hilbert did not try to hide their prostitution business. Their ability to maintain the all other services, however, suffered from the complacency of monopoly. The station itself rotted with neglect as newer long-haul freighters bypassed the station to keep to a time table. The hotel manager had been more than happy to scan Lind's ID and to check him in. Lind saw only one entry on the registry since he and Kay checked in more than a week before.
The facility catered exclusively to Sadko employees, complete with Russian as the primary language, but L2H provided the supplies, alcohol, and sex. In its heyday, perhaps ten years before, the crews would pour out of the ships as soon as they docked, met by overpaid L2H contractors selling refreshments, themselves, or other entertainment. Even Lind's first visit had been packed with long-haul passengers anxious to break out of their traveling isolation tanks. The development of endurance super-freighters like the Guppies, though, meant the number of vessels and the size of each crew dropped. Sadko hauled more with less, which dried up the demand for rest facilities like Norse Station. They dry docks justified Norse Station's continued existence, and the rest hung on like vestigial organs, remnants of a time long past. The night before, the only other patrons at the bar were locals, mostly bored L2H employees collecting pay for doing next to nothing. Lind chose not to talk to any of them,. He wanted to be alone while he drowned out the memory of Kay's body lying in state in his berth. Lind didn't remember how he got back to his room, but he had a vague memory of stumbling about and a clear understanding of his current pain.
But the night before had been the night before, and he needed to get his head back to a place where he could function. The shower produced great results as it always did. Lind remained slightly obsessive about the luxury of a hot shower. As soon as the shuttle took him from the dry dock to the station, he showered in the crew locker room and changed into something he hadn't been wearing for a week. After he stumbled into the hotel room, bourbon and vomit on his shirt, he showered. After rolling out of bed early that morning, hardly refreshed and regretting drinking alone, he had showered. Strict water rationing for weeks on end made it difficult to get that relaxed feeling bathing ought to bring on. The routine of it gave him a touchstone and, for those minutes, he could be in nearly any place, on any day. For those minutes first thing in the morning, letting the hot droplets roll down his skin, he nearly forgot about the pounding headache and the death of his partner. He gathered enough momentum to get dressed and leave the room.
A lifetime in space made fruits, vegetables, and real meat precious commodities. Stops like Norse Station gave him the opportunity to eat well. Instead, he stopped at a small café on his way off the station, filling up on coffee and pastries lacking any nutritional value, most of which remained partially frozen. Kay would have mocked him, asking how he could put such things into his body. He put them there because they, like the shower or the decent meal the night before, allowed him to focus on something other than what existed on the other side of the double bulkheads. The emptiness scared him far more now he was by himself than it ever did before. Banishing all thoughts not pertaining to the plate and glass in front of him, he could handle it. Lind enjoyed his breakfast, watching the news on a screen in the café's corner.
Sitting, eating, drinking, and listening, a voice came over the public announcement system telling him that the shuttle would depart shortly, making its thrice daily rounds to the handful of outlying facilities that made up Norse Station. At that moment, the throbbing restarted around his temples and moved forward towards his eye sockets. The words on the information pad screen he watched seemed to bounce with his pulse while every swallow fought harder and harder to come back up. By the second announcement, the hangover returned full-scale, and Lind barely made it out of his seat and shuffled along the corridors towards the airlock.
The harsh fluorescent lighting aboard the small craft only made matters worse. He strapped himself into his seat, still unsteady. The jolt of departure and the abrupt turn from the station nearly made him vomit on the empty seat next to him. It became of extreme importance to him that none of the other five people traveling near him knew who he was. Kay always fared better the morning after benders. Lind had no idea why he suffered so much in his old age, but he held back the queasiness for thirty more minutes until he arrived at the dry dock and became the only passenger to disembark.
An over-sized mechanic, wearing a pair of overalls with "Timothy" embroidered across the left breast, and an electronic sign reading "Special Agent Michaels" waited for him on the other side of the airlock. Lind vaguely recalled telling someone he would be by to pick up his ship first thing in the morning, but had no idea that anyone's expectations or inductive reasoning skills would be so high. The outer facilities, or any facility run by L2H, were not known for their efficiency. He shook the man's hand without much effort or conviction, and followed as he was led down a narrow hallway deeper into the facility.
"First off, I want to say I'm really sorry for what happened. I can't imagine." The mechanic began almost immediately, just as Lind almost immediately stopped listening. They crossed over a yellow and black barrier and through an open containment door. The dry dock itself could have held a medium size freighter, sufficiently larger than the modest ship Lind now crewed alone. The space dwarfed the Mako. The long, boxy lines of his ship sat upon her landing struts under lights more abrasive than those aboard the shuttle
, making Lind want to cover his eyes and hide somewhere. Maybe take another shower.
"We replaced the viewscreen, of course." The mechanic continued, leading them to a small office carved into the side of the facility behind another containment door. He offered a chair, but Lind really wanted him to offer some stale-looking coffee sitting in a stained machine behind the desk. "We also had to rebuild the copilot's chair. There's nothing pretty about it. The upholstery doesn't match and there's still a crater in the back of the frame, but we don't have the parts to replace it completely."
"It's not like anyone is going to be sitting there, anyway." Lind managed to get through his rough vocal chords.
To his credit, the mechanic did not laugh. "From everything we can tell, it was just a freak accident. A micrometeorite of the right size hit the right spot at the right angle at the right speed."
"Isn't that glass supposed to be diamond coated or something?"
"We can put the toughest skin on the outside, but sometimes things get through, especially at the speeds we're talking about. We get a lot of ships with strikes, especially here, after they've made the trip from in-system. Maybe two or three a year cause major damage. I've seen 'em tear through just about anything, totally disable ships, hit vital components, once saw one spark a fire, but I've never had one actually hit a person on their way through." He shook his head, as though it had just been a matter of time and that Lind should have expected that a chunk of space rock was going to kill his partner any day, in spite of the odds of the ship being in precisely the right location at the right time. All the words somehow penetrated the hangover haze, but Lind barely reacted.
Timothy reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out a small plastic jar. He gingerly handed it over to Lind as though it were a precious antique. Inside, a piece of brown rock, worn smooth on three sides but jagged on the others, occupied a space no larger than his smallest fingernail.
"We pulled it out of the rear bulkhead." The mechanic announced reverently. "I thought you might want it."
Lind had no idea what he would do with the bit of space rock that killed his partner. He was certain there were those in the world, of whom Timothy may be one, who would have thought that a man should treasure such lethal items, perhaps displaying it or turning it into a piece of ridiculously tacky jewelry. Lind could just imagine himself showing it to grandchildren he would never have while talking about how that ancient bit of geology killed his friend in a freak accident that no one would believe. Perhaps that was why he should hold on to it; as a reminder that Kay was dead in case he forgot.
Lind wanted to yelled at this worthless mechanic about the uselessness of being sentimental over something so ridiculous. Instead, he wordlessly stuck the jar into his pocket.
"Thanks." He managed. "I assume the repair costs are taken care of?" One of the many benefits of his status was that he never paid for anything official or worry about reimbursement of costs. Each of the various industrial giants who made life in space happen had to take care of him. Timothy seemed none too concerned about it.
"Of course." The mechanic replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Is there anything else we can do for you?"
Lind shook his head, wanting the entire ordeal to be over. As soon as they freed the ship, he would head back to the station, dock, and repeat the previous evening's rituals anew, ending with yet another hangover and more regret the next morning. He was outside of his typical jurisdiction and, without a partner, there was little for him to do. The time to find a new partner could stretch into weeks, weeks he planned to blur while he puked into the hotel toilet. Better there than on the ship. That ship. The coffin ship.
While he planned his next staggering steps, Timothy kept talking. "If you want to take a look, I'll meet you on board and take her out." Lind had forgotten that Timothy, or rather the company he worked for, could not trust Lind to fly his own ship out of the dry dock. It would only delay his plans for further stupor. Without another word, he stood, clumsily tipping back the metal chair with a clatter, and strode wide towards the door.
The Mako drooped on its landing gear. For the first time, he noticed the pock marks peppering the hull. Those few penetrating the skin sparkled with ragged metal edges and disappeared deeper into the ship. Some discolored patches broke the smooth lines from where mechanics covered up the problems. Lind rarely took the ramp sticking up into the belly of the vessel. They nearly always connected to a station airlock. He couldn't remember the last time he got to see his home up close from the outside. From this new perspective, seeing the weathering his ship had taken over the years, Lind wondered how his partner's death could be an oddity. From the outside, in the repair hanger, under the lights, covered with wear, the ship looked, and he felt, even more pathetic.
Every hangover brought lower back pain, and that lower back pain dragged him back each step he took up the ramp. The dim interior relieved the eye strain from the work lights outside. He drove straight past the kitchen, gym, and rec room, all places where Kay's fingerprints remained. That grand tour took about ten steps. Turning at the base of the ladder leading to the top deck, he froze. Intellectually, he considered the ridiculousness of his frozen position. His home surely survived the splatter of blood and the smell of decay. For days, he occupied the same space with the body. If anything, the return to a ship rejuvenated with repaired scars ought to push him forward into a post-Kay life. That hope of progress took him through the door.
For the most part, little had changed. No outward signs of blood, although, if he scoured the seams between metal plates of the deck, and the corners of bolts holding the console together, as any good investigator would have, he would have found evidence of the ordeal. Likely, those microscopic remnants of Kay would last until the ship's next owner or the scrap yard. Lind checked the door to his room, still sealed from before dropped the ship off to go on his bender. Like a child peaking through his fingers during a horror movie, he edged his peripheral vision over the threshold to Kay's room. Most of the debris from his attempt to save a life had been carted away, but the mattress remained bare and stained. He would have to check his supplies to see if he had another set of sheets; replacing the mattress itself meant ordering one, an effort he couldn't handle at the moment.
In the likely distant future, Lind pictured himself sitting on the floor, cataloging and boxing all Kay's possessions. There was no way he could handle such a chore at the moment, so he shut the door and moved on. In the cockpit, the haphazardly sealed patch no longer obscured the view. Nothing could hide the pilot's chair. Once covered with a dark brown cloth, worn down with years of occupation, its new color boasted a black so pristine the slightest use would destroy it. An irregular pyramid rose from the back, still with the jagged hole, the only obvious sign of the previous week's events.
Sitting in his seat (it had always been his seat, something about Kay being in the business long enough to have a chauffeur) Lind stared blankly at the empty screens. No main power meant no pulse for the ship, and each glass display dryly showed nothing and illuminated nothing in the cabin. Without the engine's rhythm, the regular slow pulse that flowed back and forth through the structure stayed still. Even the gravity held Lind less tightly as it radiated from the floor of the facility rather than the heart of his ship. Nothing before him and nothing after him, Lind focused on the blood pounding through his temples, and, leaning his elbows on the console, rubbed his eyes slowly yet desperately.
Vibrations bounced through the struts to the top deck as the mechanic boarded. The footsteps stopped only long enough for the landing ramp to retract, and the lower airlock sealed them in. With careless, ungainly strides, the L2H employee stepped off the stairs and strode into the cockpit.
"Everything look okay?" Timothy said, handing a reader to Lind that outlined each minor task mechanics conceived to milk pennies out of the work. The balance said zero, and he imagined some accountant at Ephemeris Engineering or L2H found ways to cover the costs. All the respons
ibilities had been built into The Contract decades before, and the expenses of a handful of investigators meant virtually nothing to any of the four monopolies. Lind signed the form, confirming the work had been done. His responsibility complete, Lind returned to the business of staring at the blank console.
"You. . . you know I have to fly the ship out, right?" The overalls stuttered asking, understanding the enthusiasm with which that would be received. "It's policy."
Lind wanted to tell him he could pilot his own ship without destroying any property, and, if he did destroy any property, he certainly did not care. He wanted to ask this Timothy person whom he thought they would call to investigate Lind if he managed to destroy the entire facility in an attempt to move his ship one hundred meters forward. The bile in the back of his throat convinced him that, if he pushed the issue, the mechanic might catch on and ask whether the Contract permitted Lind to pilot a vessel in his condition. Certainly it did not, but the same question of investigating the investigator came to mind. An abusive and incorrect thought, but a thought that existed, nonetheless.