Void

by Matt Thomas

  Rather than pursue an altercation, one which Timothy didn't deserve, Lind stood up and stepped back, holding onto the tall seat back while the greasy mechanic took it from him. Scrutinizing the young man, Lind pondered the disparity in experiences. Surely, this mechanic lived on contract, wallowing in ridiculous amounts of money to spend three years amongst the planets and moons before returning home to either blow it all on frivolity or lose it in a divorce. The boy looked over his shoulder at the man glaring at him. His mouth functioned without a sound. Lind returned the stare. He should sit down and strap in, the mouth tried to say, but Lind could ride out a few seconds of turbulence without tying himself into his partner's seat.

  The mechanic worked the switches hanging over the console, resuscitating the ship. A whine built to a muffled scream, maintaining the scream for seconds until the ship torqued with its own power. Displays filled themselves with logos and start-up icons. Lind, through muscle memory, cleared the checklist with his eyes before realizing it. Kay never let him go through the laminated placard, mocking him for needing a piece of paper to tell him if his own ship functioned. His partner had certainly been through the procedure in worse states than the one dragging Lind down by the pit of his stomach. His legs twitched as the artificial gravity came on at a more familiar level than what he had experienced on the station.

  Once swathed in the embrace of the familiar life of the ship, Lind recognized some level of comfort fighting its way in. Red lights flashed outside as the dry dock flooded with vacuum. Metal skin creaked and groaned, relaxing into a known environment. Off in front of the windscreen, thick doors parted, opening their embrace so that Timothy could nudge the ship outside. The return to blackness eased Lind's eyes further, but his stomach flipped as the mechanic pulled the ship around the edge of the facility and, realizing the airlock was on the other side, spun it abruptly a hundred and eighty degrees. The entire process lasted briefly, perhaps fifteen minutes between the time Lind lost his seat until Timothy walked through the airlock, receiving a mumbled thanks from his customer as he returned to his workplace.

  *****

  It took less than an hour to drop off the technician and reposition the ship outside the main docks of the central facility. Traffic control sent him far out only to tell him to turn around and come back in. Lind didn't feel like arguing with them. By this point, everyone on the station likely knew of the broken Mako and equally broken Thirty-Two. He settled the ship onto the docking port as a flashing message icon interrupted the little concentration he had.

  For days, he had avoided interaction with his chain of command. He sent a report, of course, providing limited written details of the incident and a request to approve the repairs. He imagined the repair yard contacted headquarters for verification before conducting extensive and expensive work for no discernible income. They replied, offering sympathies and making the arrangements for Kay's body to be examined and incinerated. At least, that's what Lind presumed it said. He had glanced at the text without reading the words. He knew what the message said when it appeared, and he didn't see the need to go through to motions.

  This new message, however, came in video instead of text. The timing told him his superiors knew the Mako was repaired and underway. He certainly appeared as a blip on some screen near the Thirty-Two home on Ceres Station where they awaited receipt confirmation. They wouldn't let him ignore the call. After consideration, Lind decided to delay drinking for the sake of duty. Besides, someone would either find him or, worse, cut off the funds.

  The late-middle-aged man on the message, somber yet somehow arrogant appearance, wore a uniform matching the one stuffed into a storage locker somewhere on Lind's ship. Only, the speaker's uniform remained pristine having not been in the field in a decade. Lind didn't like his superiors, but he respected them.

  "Lind. I'm glad you're underway again. Believe me, I know how much a tragedy like this can take its toll. I understand you need decompression time, and you'll have it, but I have to ask for a favor first. We got a report a couple of hours ago about a ship adrift around Iapetus. A Marlin. A Sadko freighter swung by to check it out and found who we assume to be the pilot floating dead inside. We're pretty sure it's just another suicide, but we need to confirm. I'd send Kim and Julie, but they're further out in the system on a fraud case. Sadko is beating me up. They want that Marlin back. Iapetus is orbiting close to your location. Can you please fly out there, check it out, make sure it's a suicide and, if it is, turn the Marlin over to the freighter? A day out there, a few hours there checking the block, turn the ship over, a day back. I'll let you get back to your decompression time as soon as possible, and I'll even pay your expenses and give you an extra couple of days if you can do this. You'd really help me shake Sadko."

  The man shifted in his seat. "On another note, and while I'm sending you this, I want you to know I'll work hard in finding you the right person for your new partner. We're so short-staffed, but I have a suggestion. I can't remember if you've met Donovan, but her partner had a family emergency and resigned to go back to Earth. She's somewhere around Jupiter at the moment, also alone, and I may send her your way until we can work out a permanent solution for both of you. Don't worry, I won't be making any long-term arrangements for the two of you.

  "Please get me a response and a report on the Marlin ASAP, and I promise I'll make all this up to you."

  Lind leaned back in his seat. He thought about storming off the ship and heading straight to the bar. He thought about sleeping in a real bed and eating something simulating real food. He thought of the oblivion he could be in for the next few days. But he also knew none of that brought back Kay. If anything, a side-trip might prove a distraction, a familiar routine to take his mind off of things. Or it could turn into something worse and he'd be stuck. The bar and bed called, but Lind angrily hit the button to release the docking clamps he had engaged only moments before, and sharply told traffic control he was leaving. He slammed the throttle forward before they responded.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Two color tones and a bulging ridge line encircling the moon competed to define Iapetus. A red the color of rich clay dominated the face leaning into its direction of orbit. White ice covered the trailing edge of the planet. Across its face, unbroken mountains defined the equator nearly perfectly separating the two colors. A massive impact crater peered out of the surface like an inartfully-drawn eyeball. The craters and pock-marks spread along the surface highlighted the exotic texture of the satellite. Depending on perspective, the entire planet look crudely concocted, like ill-fitting scraps of other planets cobbled together.

  In spite of its significant size, a lack of meaningful resources kept humankind's footprint on the moon isolated to a geological research facility and a hydroponics plant. The Mako's computer identified less than a hundred occupants of the facility, an asterisk compared to the millions occupying its relative Titan. The postage-stamp of a colony received few visitors and rarely attracted the attention of the Thirty-Twos. Having both a cargo ship and a rare Marlin in orbit around the moon was unusual, the cargo ship more so than the Marlin. Lind easily imagined paying outrageously high fees for a high-speed courier in the absence of regular ship traffic.

  Lind wanted desperately to take a few moments to enjoy the view. Painkillers, coffee, and energy packets numbed his suffering slightly, but the isolation clung to him as it never had in his youth. The first time he laid eyes on Iapetus, against the tapestry of Saturn, Lind continued to fight the hangover that resulted from a day of drinking alone in his bunk. Several times, with his eyes closed, drifting between consciousness and sleep, listening to the sounds of the ship's power around him, he caught himself speaking to Kay, whom his distorted senses perceived as not yet dead. If he played his cards right, he could finish his inspection and be back at Norse station by the next day, where he could find enough alcohol to keep him properly sedated until all of his senses were on the same blurry page.

  But for the moment, cir
cumstances required that he ignore the view of the planet and focus the ships orbiting above it. Contrasted against the light side of the surface, mimicking its composition of dirt-covered gloss, a Flounder orbited. The windows of the cockpit broke the lines, appearing as black blotches on the capsule suspended under the expansive delta wing. The chipping paint of the Sadko Transportation logo took up much hull surface, proclaiming the vessel's corporate affiliation even at a great distance. Juxtaposed with it nearly nose to nose, was the Marlin, with its long, low dorsal fin and tiny wings tucked beneath a pair of over-sized engines, all crafted without sharp corners or edges. Its logos shone clean and proud on the fuselage tiny enough to cram a second person only as a last resort. Lind fought the urge to speak to himself out loud. Instead of making snide comments for his own amusement about where Sadko chose to put its money, Lind made contact.

  Distance and a poor connection garbled the heavy Russian words until he barely understood the response to his call. Unwilling to use his still recovering brain-power to translate detailed instructions, Lind had his computer transmit a plan to the other ship. Docking all three ships required a lot of coordination, especially with the smallest ship completely disabled. After thirty minutes, Lind turned the vessels into a congealed metal raft. Lind stood at the Mako's lower level airlock, relieved he changed into something slightly more official than the threadbare jeans and wrinkled shirt he woke up with.

  The door clamored open and the ubiquitous and stereotypical Sadko captain stepped aboard his ship. Lind barely paid attention to his looks, the dark red uniform sporting the company logo in no better relief than the faded image on the side of his ship, and name spelled in Cyrillic provided all the information he needed for the nearly pointless exercise. He looked just like all the other Sadko captains, anyway, burly for a man who spent his whole life in the reduced gravity of space, bearded, and red-faced from years of heavy drinking among the stars. The pilot stuck out his hand, and Lind shook it.

  "Gavaritiye pa-Angliski?" Lind asked it terribly pronounced Russian. They gave him enough language skills in training to ask whether someone spoke English in Russian, Bengali, French, and a smattering of other dialects often encountered at the various stations, factories, and refineries found throughout the system. He paid attention to none of it. Kay had taken it more seriously but he was a better investigator and person, anyway.

  "Yes, of course." The man said, raising his eyebrows in annoyance. Lind had not developed a plan in case the man spoke no English, but the probability of a ship's captain not being at least conversational was low. The Sadko employee needed some way to communicate at each of the stations he visited along his route.

  "Walk me through what happened." Lind said, skipping straight to the point. Now that orders yanked him away from Norse Station, maybe he didn't have to return there. Sure, he paid for the room and left a small bag of toiletries behind, but Titan's excellent bars could help him forget about micrometeorites. He just needed to get through the interview and then get on the ship.

  The Sadko captain continued a story already in progress. He must have started while Lind was thinking about anything else. "... We saw it was a Marlin, so of course we took a closer look."

  "Right, because, who gives a shit about a Flounder floating out there?"

  "I know my ship is very common. But Sadko helps any ship in distress. And who wouldn't want a closer look at a Marlin?"

  "Look, I get it." Lind answered, holding up his hands in an unnecessary calming gesture. "Recovering an expensive ship like a Marlin brings a bonus."

  "And one of us will fly it, no?" Lind thought he might take up the opportunity to fly the fastest little ship out there himself, but also realized his present apathy tempered the excitement of it. "We looked through the window and saw the body and blood. We called Thirty-Twos and stayed put."

  Lind led the Russian upstairs towards the main air lock connecting the Flounder to the Marlin. "Most guys would keep to their schedule." He said.

  "If I killed myself, I wouldn't want to float in space forever. I hope someone would take me and my ship home."

  "You think it was a suicide?" Lind asked. He knew his own boss did, and he was happy to adopt it as a starting point since it meant little work.

  "I have flown in space for ten years. I know about suicides." It was the part of space life no one spoke about. A much higher percentage of the space-faring ended up taking their own life. Often, they succumbed to the long hauls, or the close quarters, or the crushing emptiness outside the hull Lind had fought since Kay died. Lind suicide investigations outnumbered his homicide investigations. They jumped out an airlock if they were idiots or, if they were smart, they'd take a sleeping pill and lower the oxygen level. Most of them were idiots.

  "Most suicides do float in space forever." Lind commented, putting on the disposable paper suit and mask that kept the crime scene clean. He kept talking, but he didn't know why. The presence of another, other than his late partner, was the first such experience since the last time his partner took a breath in the room a few meters away. "The soloers like to set a course, like, to the sun or outside the system before they do it. We keep track of them but rarely catch up to retrieve the body."

  With a push of a button, the airlock chamber extended from the ship, reaching out to touch the other orbiting feet away containing nothing but a body. The Russian made a move to follow Lind into the chamber, unadorned with any protective equipment. Lind realized no one else occupied his ship, and he preferred not to leave some stranger unaccompanied. So, he motioned for the captain to step into the airlock and shut the inner door. "Don't step out of the airlock."

  Marlins sacrificed much for their speed and power, including gravity. Turning off the gravity within the bridge between the ships mitigated the chances that the force might manipulate the precise state of the crime scene. He braced himself against the bulkhead as his feet floated free. He neglected to mention it to his companion, who let out a curse as he lost his equilibrium. The second step of the process froze the murder scene for posterity. A press of a button released one small machine through the other ship's airlock. The drone made its way through the ship, spraying laser and sonar signals to map every detail twice. A small ship like a Marlin only took three minutes to map, during which Lind stood in uncomfortable proximity to the Russian. The drone returned, and Lind stepped through the airlock, leaving the other Captain stuck in the gap between the vessels.

  The interior was a macabre snow-globe of gore. Blood droplets, bits of skull, and brain matter free fell in place, suspended throughout the cabin. The small camera in Lind's mask captured every sanguine reflection of the sunlight streaming through the front window. The claustrophobic interior focused all of his attention on the cockpit and the body. He was surprised at the damage to the head. This pilot hadn't stabbed himself or slit his wrists like a normal person; he had shot himself in the head. As much as Lind wanted to skip to the end and examine the body more closely, he scanned the entire interior, the cot carved into the port bulkhead, the empty cargo shelves carved into the starboard, and the few inches of personal space. Lind wondered why the man with half of his head blown off would jump through all the hoops necessary to become special missions pilot and spend the rest of their life stuck in a ridiculously cramped cell in a vast prison. Then, Lind stopped wondering about why someone would choose suicide.

  That thought broke through Lind's dehydrated brain. Suppressing the urge to dismiss this incident as quickly as possible, he thought about what it would take for the pilot to take his own life; but not the psychology involved. Those dark thoughts were not as alien as people would like to believe. Instead, Lind considered the mechanics of the pistol being brought onto the ship. Every item taken off of Earth made its way through a way-point called simply "the Hub."

  The theory was more than theory, it was fact, enforced by the physics of getting a ship out of the home planet's thick atmosphere. Ships with the aerodynamics and power to make it out of Ear
th's atmosphere didn't do well on long distance cruises in space, so they all stopped at the Hub where people and cargo transferred to more space worthy ships.

  The engineering tightly controlled every ship leaving Earth, and thus controlled everything making its way into the solar system. Weapons, in particular, faced severe limitations. Lind maintained a database with all two hundred and thirty eight firearms permitted off the planet. Sure, special missions pilots flying Marlins occasionally, very occasionally, carried one, but that only created further doubt in his mind. Sadko firmly gripped near absolute controls on those jobs and the people who held them. Someone would have to work hard to slip through all the fail-safes.

  As Lind crept towards the body, and his list of questions exponentially increased. Through the plastic shield in front of the face, and his flashlight fighting through the flotsam, Lind banished all consideration of suicide the instant he saw the entry hole in the back of the head. Careful to photograph every detail first, Lind twisted the body, hanging nearly upside down under the top panel of the cockpit, to face him. The small hole in the back, covered by swaths of curly black hair, proved a pinprick compared to the destruction the bullet brought upon the man's face. The left eyeball burst in its socket, barely recognizable amongst the twisted bone, skin, and cartilage erupting where the brow and nose joined. Flecks of gray, caught on jagged skull fragments, waved gently at the motion bringing the body around. The windscreen clung to enough biological shrapnel to make viewing of the outside nearly impossible.

  Lind had to brace himself against one of the handholds along the bulkhead to pull the body back from the cockpit. It drifted back towards the airlock, bouncing along the walls. His jacket still draped over the back of the lone pilot's chair. Each secured pocket running down the front of the flight suit required inspection. The dead man's wallet, typically alive with kitschy animations rotating through personal photos or displaying his license, sat dead and blank. Not that the victims wallet had nothing; the wallet was as dead as its owner. Every other screen in the ship, now that he looked at them closely, showed the same nothingness. Silence dominated the Marlin, utter stillness alien to the machinery of space travel. Nothing functioned.