Across the Void

by S. K. Vaughn

  “Why can’t we stay at Albright’s Bond villain compound?”

  “I don’t have a way to contact him right now.”

  “Where is this place?”

  “Out of state. We can go by bus to keep a low profile. We just need to figure out how to get to the station.”

  “Taxi?”

  “If we see one. Calling is not an option.”

  “Zipcar,” Raj said, snapping his fingers.

  Stephen sighed deeply. “Every bit of that is traceable. App, credit card—”

  “Old man, you don’t need an app, and who the hell uses credit cards anymore? I can use my untraceable dark web login on that poker machine over there by the bathroom, barter game sphere points for Zipcar creds, and boom!”

  “How long is that going to take?” Stephen asked, eyeballing new patrons walking in.

  “Two minutes,” Raj said, and headed for the poker machine.

  He came back in one. “Let’s go. The car’s three blocks away.”

  On the way to the bus station, they withdrew as much money as they could from bank machines and then dumped the car a mile from the depot. They bought the bus tickets with cash, and fifteen hours later they were in Key West. They waited an hour for the sun to go down and then walked from the bus station to the conch house in Whitehead Spit that Stephen had frequented as a child and May had taken him to for his birthday. Stephen gambled that it would be empty, as it was off-season. He knew how to jimmy the back-door latch, which had been loose even when he was a kid, and they quietly went inside. The reservation calendar on the fridge showed they had at least three weeks before any renters were scheduled to arrive.

  “Damn, what is this dusty old museum?”

  Raj switched on a light, and Stephen switched it off quickly. “No lights, no TV, nothing electronic. Okay?”

  “Have I ever told you I’m afraid of the dark?” Raj said.

  “Yet you work in it all day long. The dark is our best friend right now.”

  “You’re making it scarier saying things like that.”

  Stephen looked in the fridge. There were some leftover beers and frozen food from the previous renters. He handed Raj a beer. Raj raised the bottle for a toast.

  “Good friends help you hide money from your ex,” Raj said, tapping Stephen’s bottle. “Best friends hide you from the feds.”

  The two of them spent the next couple of hours finishing the beers, whispering in the dark about what Stephen had seen at Ian’s launch facility, and reminiscing like two kids at summer camp after lights-out.

  64

  Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

  December 3, 2057

  “You’re making a mistake, Stephen.”

  Ian Albright sat in Stephen’s office on campus. It was an odd pairing. Ian was a man of the future, the very blade responsible for the bleeding edge of progress. And there he was, uncomfortably smothered by an overstuffed chair in a centuries-old building with clanging pipes and slanted floors, being forced to listen to the one word he despised the most: no.

  “That’s what all my colleagues tell me.”

  “Why don’t you listen to them?”

  “Because theirs is a game of inches. Mine isn’t.”

  “It will be if you give this mission to NASA.”

  “Ian, I realize you have the means to make this a much larger mission than maybe even I can imagine. No one maximizes the potential of scientific discoveries like you do. But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. The implications of Europa are too important to be overshadowed by its profit potential. If everything goes as planned, I want the world to see how this could give hope to everyone’s future, not just the wealthy.”

  “My friend, if you think for one minute NASA would be doing this for the good of humankind, you’re even more naive than I thought. Just because they don’t appear to have people like me running that program doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Like everything in the federal government, there are wealthy and powerful puppet masters pulling all the strings. In this case, they’re undoubtedly pulling Robert Warren’s strings. And right now, they’re dying to sink their teeth into this.”

  “I’m not as naive as you think, Ian. At least there are some checks and balances in the cabal you’re claiming runs NASA. With you, there are zero checks and balances. Total autocratic rule. No matter what whim you might decide to follow, there would be no one there to stop you.”

  “Which is why I will own the future of deep-space exploration. I have no one to tie me down or subjugate my intellect. You’re acting like that’s dangerous, but it’s the very reason for my success. Times like these are not made for committees, Stephen. And you’re willing to risk working with a man like Robert Warren, someone who knows next to nothing about space exploration and who will never be able to appreciate your mind and your work?”

  Stephen laughed. “Robert Warren is nothing more than a figurehead for the administration, a man whose job it is to make this palatable to the rabid opposition. I’m not putting any trust in him. I am, however, putting trust in his people. They are exceptional, and some of them have made me see even deeper into the possibilities of the mission.”

  A few months earlier, back in February, Stephen had met with one of those people, the man who was the reason Stephen had decided to go with NASA. At that time, he had still been leaning heavily toward working with Ian. Sensing this, Robert Warren had invited him to come to Houston to meet one of the newest members of the engineering team. He’d presented the whole thing in a cryptic manner, knowing that the more facts he provided to Stephen, the more opportunities Stephen would have to find ways to say no.

  When Stephen had arrived at Johnson and Robert introduced him to Raj, he almost turned around and walked out the door. But then Raj spoke.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually considering working with that douchebag Albright.”

  “Raj . . .” Robert said in a warning tone.

  “Is this your plan for securing the mission, Robert?” Stephen said. “Have some grad student try to shame me into going your way?”

  “I didn’t go to grad school,” Raj said arrogantly. “Big degrees are for people who like writing papers and sucking at the academic teat.”

  “And now you’re insulting me,” Stephen said, more to Robert than to Raj. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “I’m sorry, Stephen. Rajah is—”

  “Raj. Only my dead grandmother calls me Rajah.”

  “Raj,” Robert continued, “has something to show you.”

  Raj looked at him like he was out of his mind. “Oh, sure,” he said. “I do.”

  Robert dimmed the lights and switched on his wall screen, and Raj’s Hawking II design materialized in all its glory. It was rendered in 3-D and made to look exactly like the real thing. Stephen didn’t let on that he was intrigued. Instead, he checked out every angle and spec on the screen. When he was done, his mind was blown. Here was this guy who looked like he’d just crawled out of bed, acting like an arrogant teenager, responsible for one of the most brilliant designs he had ever seen.

  65

  It was late, shortly after 2:00 a.m., when Stephen and Raj turned in. Raj took the master bedroom, and Stephen opted to sleep on the couch to keep watch. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, and he was right. His mind was too preoccupied, obsessing over how things had changed in the worst possible ways in such a short period of time. Only four months back, the Hawking II had launched for Europa. How was it possible that he could now be hiding from Robert Warren, waiting to go on a mission with Ian Albright to rescue May? To make matters worse, everything Stephen had worked for since he graduated from college was on the verge of being lost, or at least taken from him.

  But all of that paled in comparison to the anxiety he felt about May’s pregnancy. He could clearly remember the last night they were together on Wright Station, the only possible time conception could have taken place. It was eight days before launch
, and he’d been in their quarters, lying awake in bed. Just like now, he wasn’t able to sleep; his mind was generating complex ruminations, driven by his increasing anxiety. There was too much to think about, to worry over, and with each passing day it got worse. That night, May had gotten back late from a training session, and he could tell she was still wired. She came to bed wearing her robe, slightly loosened, hoping to pique his interest. He tried to pretend he was half-asleep, but that didn’t dissuade her. She moved on to phase two and put one of his hands on her body, sliding in closer.

  “May, I’m—”

  “Too tired?” she said, disappointed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. I was beginning to think I’d lost my mojo, and it looks like I was right.”

  Stephen stared at the ceiling for a moment, trying to think of anything to say that might grant him a reprieve from May’s anger. He knew it was futile, though, as May never took kindly to his rejection of her advances. Of course, she could do it at will, and with impunity, but mentioning that would also result in a fight Stephen had no interest in having. Instead, he did the one thing he could do to avoid a heated exchange or a cold shoulder. He turned to her and pulled her in for a kiss.

  After they’d made love that night, which felt like a chore, and May had fallen asleep, Stephen got out of bed and looked through the observation window at the stars. He knew he would be doing a lot of that in May’s absence, waiting for her. Looking back at her on the bed, he already felt as though there were hundreds of millions of miles between them. The loneliness of that thought was deep and insidious, and it chilled him to the core. Two days later, they were no longer speaking. Then she was gone.

  “Did you hear something?” Raj whispered.

  Stephen had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t heard Raj walk out of his bedroom.

  “No,” Stephen whispered. “What did you hear?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Raj said, peeking through the drapes on the side window.

  “Don’t do that,” Stephen whispered harshly. “If someone is out there, they’ll see you. Stay away from the windows.”

  They both sat on the floor for a moment, their backs to the couch, watching and listening. It was a moonless night, very dark, and they saw nothing other than the palms swaying in a light breeze.

  “I’ll check the kitchen,” Raj whispered. “Keep a lookout up here.”

  Raj walked back through the kitchen while Stephen waited. He heard Raj check the lock on the back door, and it was silent after that. Ten minutes, later, Stephen got up and tiptoed to the back of the cottage.

  “Raj?” he whispered.

  He thought he heard him in the bedroom, so he went in there. “Hey, there’s nothing—”

  Raj wasn’t there. Stephen walked through the kitchen to the small laundry room and found the back door standing open. When he looked outside, he didn’t see or hear anything. He closed the door gently and waited. Fifteen more minutes passed, and still no Raj. He went to the kitchen to grab the ancient flashlight from one of the drawers. He switched it on and scanned the backyard. Empty. The flashlight’s batteries were weak, so he switched it off and went back through the house to the front. Still nothing. If Raj was messing with him . . . He heard a noise in the kitchen and screwed up his courage. When he got back there, three men were waiting for him in the dark.

  Stephen froze in his tracks.

  This is it, he thought. This is how it ends.

  All he could do was hope Ian would survive long enough to launch. If not, May and their baby would be lost. Her last days would be spent waiting for death and hating herself for putting their little girl through it.

  The kitchen lights switched on, and Raj was there in his pajamas, standing next to two men clad in black and bristling with weaponry.

  “It’s not safe here, Dr. Knox,” one of the men said. “Mr. Albright sent us to retrieve you. Please grab your things quickly.”

  “Oh,” he stammered.

  “Dude, you should see the look on your face,” Raj said. “You thought these guys had come to whack us, didn’t you?”

  “Shut up, Raj.”

  Stephen went to the front of the house to retrieve his backpack, while Raj went into the bedroom. The two men kept watch in the front and back of the house. The man in front motioned for Stephen to go to the back door. As he walked back there, he glanced into the bedroom. Raj was still stuffing things into his duffel bag.

  “Come on,” Stephen said.

  “One second,” Raj said. “I can’t see shit.”

  “I can’t believe you brought pajamas,” Stephen said as he got down on the floor and helped pick up the clothes Raj had thrown there like a teenager.

  “I can’t sleep without them. Hey, are my glasses down there?”

  Stephen felt around for them. “No.”

  “Never mind, I got ’em.” Raj grabbed them off the windowsill and put them on, smiling.

  “Raj, I told you not to go near—”

  There was a loud pop, like a clap, and the sound of shattering glass. Something struck Stephen’s forehead. He fell back against the wall and rubbed something that felt like wet sand out of his eyes. Raj was still standing by the window. His glasses were gone, and he was holding his hand over one eye, his mouth moving silently. Then his knees buckled and he fell hard, face-first, to the floor. Stephen could see a ragged hole where Raj’s eye had been, wide and gushing blood. The wall behind where he’d been standing was splattered with gore. Stephen reached for his friend, but recoiled when bullets rained through the broken window and tore fist-sized holes in the walls.

  66

  Ian’s man and Stephen crawled across the hallway floor while more bullets ripped through the house. The shooters were using silencers, so there were no reports from outside, just loud pops and whines inside, filling the place with wood splinters, broken glass, and plaster dust. Ian’s second man was in the kitchen, returning fire with his silenced submachine gun. Stephen heard a crack, like bone breaking, and a loud thud on the floor, and saw the man in the kitchen go down with two bleeding wounds to the head.

  Stephen and the other man froze in the hallway. He held his submachine gun at the ready while whispering something into the radio mic adhered to his cheek. Blood trickled into Stephen’s eye, and his shaking hand felt around his forehead. Something sharp protruded from the skin above his left brow. He pulled it out. It was a fragment of Raj’s glasses. He could feel more of them embedded in his skin. The gunfire outside slowed and came to a stop. The man turned to Stephen.

  “They’re coming in,” he whispered. “Is there another way out?”

  Stephen pointed to the bathroom across the hall. “Window to outdoor shower,” he whispered back.

  “Don’t move,” the man said, and crawled down the hall toward the bathroom door.

  “Stephen.”

  A man outside spoke just loud enough for Stephen to hear.

  “I know you don’t want to die.”

  It was Robert. It sounded as though he were on the side of the house with the bedroom, near the window his goons had shot Raj through.

  “Come out now and you won’t get hurt.”

  The man down the hallway looked at Stephen and motioned for him to talk to keep Robert occupied for a moment.

  “You killed Raj, you piece of shit.”

  “Raj killed himself. But you can walk out of there.”

  “You’re a liar. I won’t get one foot out the door.”

  “I’m backing my men away.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You have two choices. If you stay in there, you’ll be carted away in a body bag with your friend. Come outside and see if I’m lying. Only one gives you a fifty-fifty chance.”

  The man motioned for Stephen to keep talking while he rigged something.

  “Come in here and we can walk out together.”

  Robert laughed. “I know they’re in there with you. Ian’s men.”

  “That’s right. So I
wouldn’t advise coming in.”

  “Why don’t we meet halfway? On the front porch?”

  Ian’s man nodded.

  “Okay. I need to see you first.”

  “I’m in a car parked in front. Take a look. And tell your man not to bother shooting the glass. But I’m sure he’s not that stupid.”

  “Hold on.”

  Stephen crawled to the front room and quickly peered over the couch. Through the front window, he could see Robert in the rear of an SUV. He dropped back down and crawled down the hallway. Ian’s man slid a small device into the kitchen and motioned for Stephen to crawl into the bathroom.

  “See?” Robert said. “And by the way, that was more than enough time to shoot you in the head.”

  As Stephen was going into the bathroom, the man slid another device down the hallway into the front room. He joined Stephen in the bathroom and they sat under the window. Bullets were embedded everywhere. They would be like fish in a barrel if Robert’s men opened fire again.

  “I’m getting out of the car. You have thirty seconds to be on that porch.”

  Ian’s man looked at his watch, and they let the seconds count down in silence. He motioned for Stephen to cover his ears. At the end of thirty seconds, they heard heavy boots coming up the concrete walk leading to the back door. When they kicked the door in, Ian’s man detonated the device in the kitchen.

  Stephen was not prepared for the unholy blast that came from something no larger than a cell phone. He heard glass and wood exploding and the howls of Robert’s men thrashing on the floor. Ian’s man motioned for Stephen to go for the bathroom window. Boots came pounding up onto the front porch. Stephen slid the window open and punched out the screen. As he was crawling awkwardly through it, sliding headfirst into the outdoor shower, the second device in the front room detonated. Immediately deafened, he fell into the shower and landed hard on the wood slats. Ian’s man came through the window quickly after and landed next to him.

  They waited for a moment while the man peered through a crack in the wooden wall of the outdoor shower. Then he grabbed Stephen and they ran out through the side yard. Stephen caught a glimpse of smoke, bodies, and chaos out front, but Robert’s SUV was gone. As they sprinted through the cottage yards, he saw the vehicle paralleling them on the street, lights off, a man with infrared goggles and a machine gun tracking them. They turned quickly away from the road, dodging a hail of bullets that shredded the thin mossy pines. Tires squealed at the end of the block as the driver moved to intercept them at the next road.