Across the Void

by S. K. Vaughn

  She floated there for a moment, finally taking normal breaths, and thought about what had just happened. Her whole body shook from the adrenaline comedown. Her mind could barely grasp what they’d managed to escape. They. She touched her belly lightly, this time hoping no harm had come to her little stowaway. In fact, she very much feared it had, and that thought fell heavy in her chest.

  In that moment, clarity cut right through her incredible weariness. She and her seventeen-week-old stowaway had literally gone to hell and back. And if this kid was still kicking after all that, he or she had just earned a lifelong membership to the crew. As commander, it was May’s job to lay down her life to protect her crew, and that was exactly what she was going to do. She no longer gave a shit about practicality or what anyone would think, not even her dead mother. This was her truth, and she could look it right in the eye and live with herself.

  “Welcome to square one, kid,” she said. “Now, what do you say we go see how totally fucked we are?”

  51

  Reactor failure. Detonation imminent. Evacuate.

  This message appeared on the flight deck command console after May powered it up by manual hand crank. She couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Detonation imminent? What’s next, an alien attack?”

  Back when May had reestablished contact with NASA, their engineers had logged and video-captured their entire procedure for getting the engines and reactor fully operational again. She hand-cranked more power into the command console and transferred that data pack to her EVA suit. The problem before had been that the reactor had overheated and could not vent properly or distribute the energy it was producing. If this was the same error, replicating Mission Control’s repairs could save them.

  The schematics and repair sequence looked intimidating but doable. That repair had taken nearly four hours for Mission Control to complete using telemetry. May’s suit power was at 2.75 hours, but she would not be dealing with a communications delay. That was all the time she had anyway. The rest of the battery packs in the EVA locker were dead, and there was no way to charge them without restoring internal power.

  Her stomach grumbled wildly.

  “All right. Far be it from me to prioritize saving our lives over filling your belly.”

  May hydrated with the suit’s internal pack and ate as many of the high-calorie nutrigels stored inside the suit that she could keep down. That, plus a heavy dose of mind-sharpening glucose tablets, satiated them both for the time being. She headed for the reactor and engine decks using the antigravity handholds to push off and fly through the ship’s central corridor. Strapped to her suit was a bag with every available flashlight with any juice left.

  The ship shuddered periodically, bouncing May around like a pinball, but the tremors weren’t as intense as they had been before. And each one came with a heat blast. May assumed it was the reactor venting off energy that would eventually build past the breaking point and blow the ship apart. The only good thing was that it kept the ship’s internal systems from freezing solid and being rendered useless. And, May had to admit, she was enjoying being warm for a change. But that quickly lost its charm the closer she got to the reactor, where the heat made her break out into a sweat.

  She found the sealed reactor hatch and opened it with the manual wheel crank, revealing the narrow metal access tunnel that led directly to the maintenance module. The tunnel was only about six feet wide, a tight squeeze in an EVA suit. The time left on her suit was approximately 2.2 hours.

  “Kid, I apologize in advance if you end up being born with nine heads.”

  May crawled in and inched her way through the tunnel. The farther she went, the hotter it got, but she didn’t dare waste precious suit power on internal cooling. She could take the heat, but made a note to keep an eye on her hydration. “I guess those years of living in Houston have finally paid off.”

  When her helmet light widened out at the end of the tunnel, she was happy to swim out into the small maintenance module. The room felt alive, pulsating, and tropically hot. May used the hand crank to provide power to the command console and viewed the reactor monitoring board. She then compared that to what the board had displayed back when Mission Control was doing repairs. They were nearly identical. The reactor was still fusing hydrogen nuclei together to create helium isotopes, generating power that had nowhere to go, generating heat that was not being properly released.

  There were 1.45 hours left on the suit. Enough time to get the job done, if she didn’t pass out.

  “Let’s take a look under the hood.”

  Following the repair sequence on the video recording, she removed the bolts on the repair panel with the pneumatic tools stored next to it. As she scanned its inner workings, preparing to perform the first step in the sequence, she heard a metallic clank behind her. Figuring it was just the metal panel, she turned to try to grab and secure it.

  A woman’s corpse was floating behind her, arms outstretched in a way that made it look as though she were reaching out to strangle someone. May screamed and instinctively shoved the body away, plunging it back into darkness. She shined her light around the immediate area, and the beam caught the edge of the body nearby. It was in a corner, gently bumping up against the wall. May grabbed the corpse’s arm and rotated it to get a look at her face. Unlike the bodies she’d found in the landing vehicle hangar, this one was highly decomposed. May assumed it was because she’d died around the same time as the others and had been rotting on the ship until her body was frozen by the recent power loss. A bio-code scan showed her name: Gabriella Dos Santos, her flight engineer.

  “I could have used you in here, Gabi,” May said through tears.

  After quickly fantasizing about the many exotic ways she was going to give Robert Warren an agonizing death, May secured Gabi’s body to the floor grate and got back to the repairs. When she was finished, it appeared she had done everything correctly. The heat in the room had dissipated substantially, as it had in the video of the previous repair.

  “Okay. On to the engine deck.”

  The ship shuddered, emphasizing the point. With forty-five minutes of suit power left, May made her way down the central corridor to the adjacent engine deck. It was a relief to be in a much larger and more familiar space. It was in there that the EmDrive propulsion system, or radio frequency resonant cavity thruster, housed its huge magnetron core, pulling millions of gigawatts from the reactor to push microwaves into the engine cones. Or something to that effect. May understood it as well as most pilots: not all that well. She located the problem area and repaired the reactor’s venting system. The next step was to clear a power bottleneck in the induction unit that converted reactor energy into electricity.

  She moved to the area housing the electricity converters, one of which contained the faulty induction unit. The floor and walls were nonconducting rubber. Light blue arcs and static spark showers coming from fissures in connection points gave the room a bluish hue. With no ability to stay connected to the floor in antigravity, May needed to watch out for the spark showers caused when the current struck anything metal. One of those sparks could set her suit ablaze.

  The power induction unit was near the back of the room, a behemoth the size of a moving van. May found the maintenance panel access latches on the edges of the glass control panel top and flipped them open, raising it like a coffin lid. The needle gauges were all pinned in the red, indicating dangerous levels. She quickly completed the first few repairs in the sequence and heard the engines powering back up. Thirty minutes later, the engine deck lights flickered and began to glow. They were dim but getting brighter. May twirled around in the air, pumping her fists and shouting like a boxer who’d just won a title bout.

  “Now we’re cooking with gas, kid. Almost time for a celebratory dinner. Tonight’s menu will be a lavish feast fit for royalty. For our first course, a delightful—”

  Something shot out of the darkness and smashed the light on top of her helmet. The blo
w knocked her back a few feet into a wall of metal conduit pipes. She hit them hard and bounced off, spinning lengthwise out of control. Another blow battered her legs and spun her facedown into the metal floor grate. Her helmet glass hit so hard on the grate that her display shut down. May tried to right herself and get off the floor but was shoved back down into the metal grate. A knee was buried into her back, pinning her down. She screamed and struggled to escape, but couldn’t even manage to push up off the floor.

  “Please stop,” she gasped. “My name is Maryam Knox, and I am the commander of this vessel. I order you to stop at once.”

  Hands pulled violently on her EVA suit’s atmosphere regulator, trying to yank it from her life support pack and shut off her air.

  52

  May fired her dorsal suit thrusters but couldn’t break free. She fired the ones on the bottoms of her boots and shot out from under her attacker. After rolling into the back wall, she shined her flashlight across the room. A man in an EVA suit stood near the power induction unit. He was using his helmet’s sun visor to conceal his face and was wielding a long metal bar. His magnetic boots held him down on the metal floor grate. Her mind quickly deduced his identity. There was only one person still unaccounted for.

  “Jon,” she called out. “It’s me, May. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Jon Escher, May’s pilot, came at her again, tromping heavily on the metal floor, readying his weapon. He couldn’t move quickly, and May pushed farther away. But artificial gravity was beginning to return, so she wouldn’t have that advantage for long.

  “I know you can hear me. Answer. That’s an order.”

  He didn’t respond, and kept coming.

  “If you’re sick,” she said in the most soothing tone she could manage, “I can help. I was sick too. A lot of people were. I know you’re afraid, but please just put down the weapon and let’s talk.”

  He kept coming, and May kept her distance.

  “We’re the only ones left,” she shouted. “We need to help each other.”

  No response. May pulled out the laser cutter and waved it at him.

  “Goddammit, answer me.”

  He stopped, looked behind him, and then back at her, silently calculating.

  “Good. See, it’s me, okay?”

  He turned and walked away from her.

  “Where are you going?”

  He walked to the power induction unit and smashed the glass control panel with the metal bar. Over and over again, he bashed away.

  “No, you’ll kill us both,” she yelled.

  Watching the glass splinter and float away, she realized that was the point. Jon wasn’t sick and delusional: he was the one responsible for this, and he was trying to finish the job. Sparks flew as he swung away. Metal on metal. If he destroyed that unit, there would be no fixing it again.

  May climbed up the side of a wall on an emergency ladder, pointed herself at him, and pushed off the wall with all her strength. She flew across the room like a missile, laser cutter in hand. As he raised the bar for another blow, May slammed into his back, cutting his glove. The bar flew out of his hands and his boots detached from the floor.

  The two of them tumbled through space, grabbing wildly for each other. When May hit the opposite wall, he tried to swim back to the floor to attach his boots, but she pushed off again and grabbed hold of his arm, preventing it. He used his free arm to try to snatch the laser cutter out of her hand. She used her free hand to unsnap one of his helmet latches. He immediately started to lose suit pressure and had to let go of her so he could snap the latch back and secure his helmet. She made a mental note that atmosphere had not been fully restored, but she had no idea how much time was left on her suit. She tried to use the laser cutter on him again, but his knee shot up and knocked it out of her hand.

  The momentum from the kick forced him into a backward somersault. May grabbed on to his pack and tried to get her hands on his atmosphere regulator, but he kicked and swung his arms violently, and she could barely maintain her hold. Momentum spun them into a dark corner of the engine deck, and they smacked into a wall. May lost her grip on his back. Jon spun around, his hands grabbing for her.

  Behind him, one of the damaged transformers was shooting off long arcs of electricity. May swam toward the ceiling and moved hand over hand to a spot above the transformer. He saw her up there and hit his boot thrusters, coming for her. She kicked off the ceiling and shot straight down at him. When they collided, her momentum, combined with his heavy metal boots, forced him back down. May broke free of his grasp just before his magnetic boot attached itself to the metal transformer housing. The current arced off his boot and ignited the oxygen in his life support pack, starting a fire inside his suit.

  May grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed Jon down while he screamed and jerked like a rag doll. His suit battery had melted and cut power to the magnetic boots. Smoking and still, he drifted off into the shadows. May panted for air, feeling the darkness closing in. Her suit battery was gone. She had no choice but to roll the dice and take off her helmet.

  It was still cold, but there was a thin atmosphere to breathe. She forced herself to complete the repair sequence. When she was finished, internal power started ramping up, restoring more atmosphere and gravity.

  May found Jon lying on the ground nearby. She took his helmet off and gagged on the sweet stench of scorched flesh. His face was blackened and smoking, with long, bleeding fissures spidering all over his skull.

  “Jon,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  53

  Jon Escher was strapped to a gurney with heavy restraints in the infirmary. His entire body was so horribly charred that she couldn’t tell what was flesh and what was suit remnants that had melted onto his skin. It was a miracle he was alive. The only way May could keep his vitals somewhat stable was to pump him full of powerful IV painkillers. She worried he would die before she could find out why he had tried to destroy the ship, so she slowly eased him out of his drug haze and back to consciousness. He coughed a bloody death rattle and opened his eyes, one of which was charred and oozing brown pus. When he saw May standing over him, he tried to fight against the restraints, but the agony that caused made him back down.

  “I know you can see me, but can you hear me as well?” May asked loudly. “If you can, please nod.”

  He tried to fight again, but opened a gash in his leg and stopped. Blood trickled down the side of the gurney and pooled on the floor.

  “You’re restrained because you tried to kill me. Understand? If so, please nod.”

  He nodded and tried to speak, but only gurgled and sputtered more blood.

  “Your vocal cords are badly burned. Please don’t try to speak, or you may end up drowning in your own blood.”

  He looked up, his mind trying desperately to process the situation. May offered him some water from a plastic squeeze bottle. He did the best he could to suck the liquid down while she gently squirted it into his open mouth.

  “Do you remember who I am, Jon?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you responsible for what happened to the ship?”

  He nodded again.

  She had never liked Jon. He was a misogynist, always riding the line of insubordination, treating her with disrespect.

  “Did you kill all the people in the landing-vehicle hangar?”

  He looked away from her, then nodded. May had to fight the urge to douse him with rubbing alcohol and make his last few minutes of life a living hell.

  “Are you able to use your fingers? I’m going to give you a touch pad so we can communicate in more detail. Yes?”

  He shook his head, refusing. She held up his IV controller and decreased the pain med dosage a few clicks. He writhed in agony.

  “Wrong answer.”

  He nodded vigorously, and she restored the pain medicine.

  “I’m going to free one of your arms and place the touch pad on your meal tray. If you try to attack me again, I’ll shut
off the drip completely. Understand?”

  He looked at her for a beat, and May thought he still had a little fight left in him; so she dialed back the pain meds again to illustrate her point. He quickly nodded.

  “You’re kind of a slow learner aren’t you? Do not mess with me again.”

  She released one of his arms and set the pad in front of him. “Let’s start with something simple: Why?”

  He typed:

  orders

  “From whom?”

  He shook his head. She put him through fifteen seconds of gut-wrenching, searing pain, then brought back the meds when he was at the edge of passing out.

  warren

  “Robert Warren?”

  Jon nodded.

  “Do I need to motivate you one more time to make sure you’re telling the truth?”

  He shook his head hard, and typed again:

  warren

  “Why?” May asked, her anger rising.

  virus

  “What virus?”

  unknown

  “Something from the Europa samples?”

  seawater

  “We picked up a virus from our seawater samples. It jumped quarantine somehow. People got sick. But the virus didn’t kill everyone, Jon. You did.”

  deep quarantine protocol

  “What?”

  scuttle ship euthanize crew

  May couldn’t believe what she was reading.

  “Euthanize crew . . . Is that why Robert wanted you on board? So if something like this happened, we couldn’t bring it back?”

  dept of defense

  “How many others besides me got sick before you decided to kill everyone else?”

  12

  “Didn’t you get sick? How did you survive?”

  got sick don’t know immunity like you

  “Some of those other people you killed might have been immune.”

  might have been

  “Why the landing-vehicle hangar?”

  ordered evac