Across the Void

by S. K. Vaughn

  Ian’s man broke back toward the cottages and angled toward the water. Stephen was about to tell him they were heading for a dead end, but then he saw a man and a woman, also clad in black commando gear, waiting next to a private dock in a black military-style Zodiac boat, its outboard motor quietly churning the water. Ian’s man shoved Stephen into it, forcing him to keep his head down while the boat sped away into the night.

  67

  “Oh my God.”

  May was on the bridge, videoconferencing with Ian. Her hand was over her mouth, and tears were streaming down her face.

  “I’m sorry. We did our best, May. I lost a man myself.”

  “Raj, oh no,” she lamented. “I can’t believe it, Ian. He was like a brother. He wasn’t like a brother, he was a brother to Stephen. So dear to both of us. And Stephen—he must be absolutely devastated. I can’t even imagine it.”

  “He’s recovering from the shock. We got him back to my office and he collapsed. The whole thing is appalling.”

  “Robert Warren, so help me, Ian . . .” May said, her teeth set and her fists balled.

  “That makes two of us. Unfortunately, he has the upper hand at the moment. There’s no telling what he’s capable of.”

  “Anything and everything.”

  “Right. Which is why I’m moving the launch up. Waiting around for the second shoe to drop is far too risky.”

  “When will you go?” she asked.

  “In twenty-four hours. Sooner if possible.”

  “A week and a half early? How on earth will you be ready?”

  “We won’t be,” Ian said. “But we wouldn’t have been then either. I’ve pushed things as far as I can in a very short period of time. It’ll be a bit of a wing and a prayer, but we’ll manage.”

  “I know you will,” May said. “And I’m grateful. We’re grateful, I should say.”

  “How is the little bean?”

  “She’s quite disagreeable, just like her mother.”

  “No one’s that disagreeable. Not even me.”

  “You’re lucky I can’t punch you right now.”

  “Save it for when I see you. I’m sure I deserve it somehow.”

  “I’m sorry, but I never bought self-deprecating Ian back then, and I don’t buy him now. Even though you absolutely deserve it.”

  “You know me too well, Maryam.”

  She noticed a sudden softness to his demeanor. “Ian Albright, are you doing this because you’re still crazy for me?”

  She was sort of joking, but sort of not.

  “God, sometimes you can be so crass, Maryam.”

  He looked genuinely put off, and she was embarrassed. “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. I was telling Stephen I’ve been on this miserable crate for so long that I’ve completely lost my manners. Not that I was so refined before—”

  “Quid pro quo, I don’t buy the self-deprecating Maryam either.”

  “Of course not,” she said ruefully.

  “Chin up,” he said. “It’s been an awful twenty-four hours. But we’re Brits. If we don’t show our iron backbones, everyone else will fall to pieces.”

  “Right,” May said, correcting her posture.

  “That’s the stuff. A bit ironic, though, all this.”

  Ian wore a distant look that he used in rare times of reflection.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking the other day,” May agreed. “The world turns.”

  “It certainly does. Not to pry, but did you and Stephen ever resolve your disagreement about my helping you with your commission?”

  “What?” A prickle started in May’s fingers.

  “Well, I know it caused an argument of some kind. You told me as much when you called before the launch. In fact, you practically shouted it in my ear.”

  May felt the familiar fear and confusion that came with the inability to recall something. She had no doubt Ian was telling the truth, but her mind couldn’t get a grip on it, like slipping on ice. Something was there, but it wasn’t solid.

  68

  Orville and Wilbur Wright Space Station, Lunar Orbit

  August 31, 2067—one week before launch

  “I’ve never felt so betrayed.”

  May had just returned to Stephen’s and her quarters after a long, exhausting day of crew training. Stephen sat at their small dining table, his face flushed with anger. Being confronted that way, May panicked. Her mind quickly went over the things Stephen could be talking about and scrambled to mount a defense for each one. She had learned from fighting with her mother that it was best not to say anything when first attacked. This way, she wouldn’t accidentally blurt out something that might be completely indefensible. Also, it was important to never let on that she was emotionally shaken by the attack. Stay cool.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I’m waiting for you to elaborate.”

  In the interest of staying cool, May grabbed a supplement shake from the fridge and sat down at the table across from Stephen. She casually opened it and drank, raising eyebrows on her poker face to indicate she was waiting for him to put up or shut up. Stephen looked at her, slightly incredulous at her response, some of the wind leaving his sails.

  “Did you actually think I wouldn’t find out?” he asked in a disgusted tone.

  May’s fear peaked, and she began to seriously doubt her ability to talk her way out of anything. The way Stephen was looking at her conveyed more than the usual anger. They had fought before, but he had always been the one to remain calm. He would get heated but never let himself go too far. In that moment, he looked as though he no longer cared about any of that. Everyone had a breaking point, and he had reached his.

  “I think we both need to calm down and—”

  “We’re way past that point,” he shouted, slamming his hand on the table.

  May felt sorry for him; she could see his anger only served the purpose of holding back tears. The more he had to stifle them, the angrier he got. For the first time, May was frightened by her husband.

  “Don’t forget where we are, Stephen,” she said loud and clear. “This is not our living room. And I understand you’re upset, but I will not be spoken to that way. Do it again and I’ll walk out that door and get security.”

  His angry scowl twisted into a squint of disbelief.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” May said. “You might be willing to risk your career by causing a domestic disturbance on an international space station, but I’m not.”

  Stephen laughed bitterly. “Oh, I’m well aware of what you’ll do to preserve your fucking career,” he said.

  No. Not this, not now. May had to get the hell out of there. She was being ambushed by a moment of truth and was nowhere near prepared to deal with it.

  “Stephen, I think we should talk about this later.”

  “No. We’re talking about it now.”

  “I’m leaving,” May said, getting up.

  “Walk out that door and that’s it. I will shut you out.”

  May glared at him, her ego wanting her to say she didn’t care, that being shut out by him was exactly what she wanted. But, in her heart, that wasn’t what she wanted. And judging by the look on Stephen’s face, he was dead serious. She sat back down, resigned to confessing. She would rather hear herself say it than have him spit it all over her.

  “It was a mistake,” she said, trying to remain humble. “What I did was wrong. I just . . . I felt . . . I have no excuse except to say that it was something I did in the heat of the moment. I wasn’t thinking. And if I could take it back, I would.”

  May felt tears in her eyes and let them go. It felt good to just be honest, even if what was about to happen was going to hurt.

  “I don’t think you would take it back. From what I heard, what you did was very calculated and planned.”

  May couldn’t believe her ears. “From what you heard? From whom?”

  “It’s a small space station, May. Gossip doesn’t have very far
to travel.”

  “Who the hell told you?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does fucking matter,” May shouted. Humility gone. Defense shields up. Commence attack mode.

  “No, May. What matters is that you lied to me. What matters is that you went behind my back.”

  “I never lied to you,” she said, bewildered.

  “Are you kidding me? I asked you point-blank if you had asked Ian Albright to help you get your commission back, and you said no to my face.”

  May stopped as the impetus for Stephen’s anger became crystal clear. Part of her wanted to laugh at the pettiness of it. But the other part had different plans.

  “How dare you!” she said, her eyes daggers.

  “How dare I?”

  “You have the nerve to call me a liar, but that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

  “What?”

  “You told me you were happy my commission was restored.”

  “I was . . . am.”

  “You were happy about it, until you found out how I got it back. And now all you care about is how that makes you feel.”

  “That is total bullshit.”

  “Like all your so-called efforts to help me?”

  “So-called? I did everything I could to help you.”

  “And it wasn’t enough, was it?”

  “That’s not what this is about, May, and you know it.”

  “Look at yourself,” she said. “You can’t hide your jealousy and insecurity.”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Yes, I can. This isn’t me having coffee with an old flame and keeping it under my hat because I’m a bored housewife. This is me trying to keep my career from going down in flames, just like everything else in my life.”

  “Everything else? Now you’re just slashing and burning, trying to deflect.”

  May could smell blood. Stephen was backpedaling, losing his self-righteousness. She no longer felt sorry for him. To her, he looked weak and pathetic, deserving of the fatal blow she was waiting to unleash at the right moment.

  “Look at us,” she accused. “At our marriage. At best, we’re going through the motions. At worst, we’re deceiving ourselves into thinking there’s anything left of it after—”

  “May, don’t,” Stephen shouted, his voice shaking.

  “Don’t talk about our dead son? Don’t talk about how you abandoned me after he died? Don’t talk about the disdain you’ve felt for me since then and the resentment I’ve felt for you? If you want to know why I asked Ian to help me, the answers are in talking about all the things you’re afraid to even think about.”

  “You are . . . a fucking—”

  “A fucking what?” she yelled in his face. “I dare you to say it.”

  Stephen looked at her and gathered himself, then fired back. “Or what? Is that a threat? Look at yourself,” he scoffed. “I don’t even know the person standing in front of me right now. You’ve been deceitful, withholding information I had a right to know. And you lied about it. I’m sure you’ve justified it in your mind, as you always have in your long history of making bad decisions, but that was just you lying to yourself. And when confronted, you strike out at me as if I’ve victimized you in some way. And the way you do it . . . Your mother would be sick, knowing you used the death of our son against me to justify your psychotic need for self-promotion. I’m sick just looking at you. You imply that I’m weak, but I’ve never had to enlist the help of anyone I told the world I thought was despicable. You did. And now you’re despicable too.”

  “Great speech,” May said spitefully. “Easy for someone who never had to make any sacrifices for this marriage. There was never any risk of your losing your precious mission. I lost everything. Come to think of it, until I met you, I’d never lost a thing in my life. Failure is not in my vocabulary. What I did was an act of self-preservation. I knew there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to live with how things were. And I knew I was the only one who would be willing to do whatever it took to change that. So I did. And it worked. Like it always worked in the past when I took matters into my own hands and controlled my own destiny. Because I am exceptional. Like most men, your desire to be the hero has made you blind to the fact that I don’t need a hero. I’m the hero. Me. What I need is for my partner to support me. If not, then I have no need for a partner.”

  Stephen sat silently for several minutes while May proudly watched her words burn into him. He took a deep breath and stood up slowly, his hands resting on the table.

  “I’m going to pack my things,” he said with a tone of resignation, “and go.”

  “If you walk out that door,” May said, echoing him, “that’s it.”

  69

  After being taken back to Ian’s facility, Stephen had spent a day in the infirmary, recovering from the shock and injuries he’d suffered in Key West. The pain he felt at having lost Raj cut so deep that he wasn’t sure he would ever recover from it. The venomous hatred he felt for Robert was equally profound, but of greater concern was how far the bastard was willing to go to stop their rescue effort.

  As if he’d been reading Stephen’s thoughts, Ian strode in with a sense of urgency. “My satellite reconnaissance team has reported naval maneuvers in US territorial waters less than a hundred miles from here. I have no doubt that Robert Warren is preparing an offensive. Needless to say, my crew is now in prelaunch mode. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Excellent. The flight surgeon will give you a quick look, and we’ll get you suited up.”

  Ian left as quickly as he’d come, and was replaced by a surly old doctor who began poking and prodding without so much as a hello. Stephen was pleasantly surprised that he felt no trepidation about being strapped into the fire-breathing dragon out on the launchpad. They had about as much chance of blowing up as they did of making it into space, and God only knew what Robert Warren was going to throw at them. Stephen had developed an unfamiliar sense of resolve that made his previous fears feel petty and irrelevant. In a sense, a big part of him had died with Raj, making way for a man who had yet to be defined.

  “You’ve got a heart murmur,” the doctor said.

  “No shit,” Stephen joked.

  The man was not amused. “I can’t sign you off for this mission, Dr. Knox. The stress it’s going to put on your heart is like nothing you’ve ever—”

  “Are we done here?” Stephen asked.

  “Have a nice flight,” the man said coldly.

  After he was fitted with an EVA suit and expected to listen to and comprehend an endless list of safety points, potential hazards, things to expect when exposed to G-forces, radiation, artificial atmosphere and antigravity, and prolonged Earth separation, he was rushed to the launchpad. As an elevator slowly raised him skyward, the reality of what was about to happen finally hit him. The launch-vehicle rockets themselves, colossal beasts as big as skyscrapers and loaded with enough explosive fuel to level a major city, filled him with terror and awe. But as he ascended, breaking through thunderous clouds of jetting steam, Ian’s vessel materialized like an alien attack ship, and everything took a turn for the surreal.

  Walking through the door of the bridge, Stephen was relieved to see that the ship’s interior did not match the exterior. It wasn’t as alien, but to say it was conventional was also not accurate. Like Ian’s launch center, it was sophisticated and advanced, but also a direct projection of his personality. And it was much smaller than Stephen had expected—about half the size of the interior of a large commercial airliner.

  At the fore, positioned in front of an observation window that almost completely curved around it, was the flight deck itself. It was wide, with an arc shape that perfectly matched the curve of the window. Ian sat at the apex, flanked by two officers named Jack and Zola. Behind them was a circular area with a large metal disk on the floor and another one directly below it. Between the disks was a three-dimensional projection f
ield. Video images from thousands of cameras inside and outside the ship were projected there with architectural precision. Simultaneous data feeds allowed the crew to interact with the projections, highlighting areas, zooming, panning, and manipulating their view angles with touch or voice commands. Ian and the crew referred to this mechanism as “the eye.”

  Behind the flight deck, moving aft, was the engineering console, also arc shaped but about half the size of the flight deck and facing in the opposite direction. All of it formed what Ian liked to call a “collaborative nexus” that maximized team interaction without overemphasizing typical leadership hierarchies. Ian was clearly in charge, but he prided himself on working with people with the knowledge, experience, and confidence needed to own their areas and have no fear of challenging his leadership when necessary.

  Stephen sat in the first of three rows of passenger launch seats positioned behind the engineering console, facing the fore of the ship. The rest of the bridge contained stations that nonflight crew would occupy after launch, as well as additional flight and engineering command consoles to accommodate Ian’s constant mobility, which was currently in full swing. As he and the crew ran around doing last checks, the Wagnerian opera The Flying Dutchman was playing, and Ian sang along in German. Thankfully, the absurd nature of it all made it hard for Stephen to connect to his fear.

  “All right, Stephen?” Ian asked.

  “I have to be,” Stephen said calmly.

  “Good. My SAT recon team has advised us we might have a visit from the US Navy soon, so I’ve pushed the launch back to”—he looked at his watch—“now.”