by Sam Renner
+++++
Grey moves quickly across the main floor of Zulu. It’s not crowded, but it’s not quiet either. Not like the early mornings when she can roam this space almost totally alone. People are gathered in small groups. Their chatter and the talk of commentators from The Quickstop’s high-hung monitors brings a level of noise to the place that’s actually nice.
For a moment, she thinks she could forget about everything that’s happening in the guts of her station. Just take a seat in the benches in the center of the main floor, under the peak of Zulu’s dome, and just be ignorant that the place is shutting down, that it’s dying.
She’d prefer that, actually. To be a kid again and not know anything about mom and dad fighting. To not know about how there was more month than there was paycheck and that it’s happening more and more often. To be blissfully ignorant of all of that, her only concern about who she’d play with the next day.
But she can’t do that, can’t forget that she does know all of those things. She knows all about Zulu’s air handler, all about its water recycler, all about how that if they don’t figure this out there won’t be a station for these crews to come to.
She looks to The Quickstop as she walks. She sees its customers. She sees Carole. Sees Frank.
They don’t know, either.
She stops walking for a moment, begins to step toward the counter. Then she thinks better of it.
They don’t need to know. Not yet. We’ll fix this. We’ll get Zulu back.
The resolve is back in her spine. It forces her to walk taller, and she begins her trip back across the main floor again. She stops at the elevator to the crew quarters and pushes the call button. A moment later the doors open and she steps on. The air inside the elevator is stale and sticky. If you hadn’t thought something was wrong before, you would after riding this too long.
The doors open on the seventh floor and Grey steps into the hall and half a dozen soldiers milling about. She smiles and nods at the couple of them who make eye contact.
She looks for cabin numbers on the wall and scans a couple before she hears her name being called.
“Captain Grey?”
She turns and smiles quickly, then pulls herself back together.
“Commander McKibbon. Do you have a moment?”
“I do.” He gestures toward a room down the hall. “That’s where you all have put me.”
She steps in front of him and he follows, closing the door behind them. With the privacy she lets the smile overwhelm her face. She pushes herself up on her toes and plants a kiss on McKibbon’s cheek.
“Hi, you,” he says.
“Hey. How’s the move going?”
“It’ll be better if I know why we’ve all been asked to relocate.”
She nods and looks over the room. It’s one of Zulu’s standard crew cabins. Smaller than her place, but she has one of the deluxe rooms. Command the station and you get all of the things she sees here plus a dining nook. There’s a couch, a chair, a coffee table. He has a small bag that’s still zipped closed and against the wall under the monitor that’s hung there.
She takes a seat on the edge of the couch. McKibbon steps in front of her and takes a seat next to her.
“So,” she says then hesitates. “Something is wrong with Zulu. Bad wrong.”
“How bad?”
“Dying bad.”
“Who’s dying? Are you dying? Or is it our pilot?”
Grey is shaking her head as he talks and interrupts before he can throw out another name.
“It’s not someone, it’s the station. It’s Zulu. She’s the one dying.”
McKibbon narrows his eyes. He tips his head slightly sideways like a puppy. Grey thinks it’s cute.
“I don’t … stations don’t die. They run until they’re told not to.”
“Apparently not,” Grey says. “Not this one. Of course, not this one. The one I get command of. That’s the one that’s the anomaly.”
“So what’s happening?”
“I’m not supposed to be talking with you about this? Rules and regulations and all of that. But …ah, who cares. We don’t know what’s happening. It’s not like I’ll be revealing some kind of secrets that no one else is supposed to know about.”
Grey pauses. She gathers up the story in her head, lining up times and events so it all makes sense. She pushes the mental play button and begins to recount everything to McKibbon. It started in the morning with curious readings. Things got progressively worse. Curious readings became bad readings became failing systems. They had to shut down the power to the rings as a way to reduce demand on everything. That’s why McKibbon and his team are here. That didn’t work though, as the systems are still shutting down. They don’t know how to stop it. And they have one more drastic measure before Grey fears she’ll have to call Zulu lost and abandon her post.
Grey stops talking. McKibbon takes a moment to consider everything that she’s just told him then he stands. He walks over to the zipped bag sitting under the monitor. He opens it and fumbles around inside then pulls a golden case with an ornate L and M etched on the top. He brings it over to Grey and flips it open with a flick of his thumb.
Cigarettes. He offers one to Grey then takes one for himself. He flips the case closed and drops it into his pocket. When he pulls his hand back out he’s holding a box of matches.
Grey puts the hand-rolled cigarette to her nose and breathes in deep. She feels the tang of the tobacco catch in the back of her throat.
She pulls the cigarette away and holds it in front of her. It’s rolled tight. It’s sealed well. If McKibbon wasn’t a great troop commander he could still make a good living doing this, she thinks.
The match catches and flickers to life just outside of her periphery.
“Light?” McKibbon asks.
Grey puts the cigarette to her mouth and dips the other end into the flame. She pulls in a lungful of smoke then lets it spill out of her mouth in front of her. She leans back into the couch cushions.
She closes her eyes then says: “You know, commander, smoking like this is against the rules. I can have you written up for this. Demoted. Busted down a rank or two and moved off this station.”
McKibbon chuckles. “Empty promises.”
Grey swats him on the leg with her free hand. He slides next to her, and she rests her head on his shoulder.
“What’s happening to your station?” he asks,
She exhales another cloud of smoke. “I don’t know. We’ve been trying to puzzle it out all day. My team … they are trying. They really are. But this is something that’s beyond them. It’s beyond all of us. It just doesn’t make sense.”
She takes another deep drag on her cigarette then lets it out.
“We aren’t trained for this kind of thing in school. We learn how to deal with a lot of different incidents. Stuff involving people. Stuff involving junk floating out there, both manmade and natural. But we never learned about this. The station was the constant. It was just assumed it’d always be there.”
McKibbon leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. Grey sits up and moves to the edge of the couch.
“So something is the trigger for all of this, right? It’s either something that’s happened or it’s someone who’s kicked off these events. But there’s a catalyst. Find that and solve the problem.”
“Oh, so that’s all we need to do?” Grey barks. “Just find the catalyst? Thanks. I’ll get right on that.”
McKibbon turns to look at Grey. “Hey. Don’t bite my head off. This is my station too. These soldiers are mine to command. They are mine to protect. You tell me that the place all of us have been assigned may be dead in …” He pauses to let Grey fill in the answer.
“We don’t know. A day or two?”
“... dead within a week then either I need to get them and all their gear off of Zulu, or I need to help you figure out how to stop this whole process.”
Grey nods while he speaks. “I know.
I’m sorry,” she says once he’s finished. “I’m just … frustrated.”
“You’re more than that. You’re mad, and it’s OK.”
“I am mad. Why me? Why this station? Why my station?” She looks for a place to crush out what’s left of her cigarette. McKibbon takes the she hasn’t smoked from her and drops it into the sink in the kitchenette.
"Put all that aside," McKibbon says as he comes back to the couch, "all the frustration and all the anger, and put on your logic hat. Tell me what you think is happening."
"Well, using my logic hat, I don't know."
"Hypothesize with me. We can puzzle this out. We're smart people. We're in charge for a reason. We just need to take a step back from it and look at it with fresh eyes."
Grey taps on McKibbon’s pocket, and her fingernail dings the metal cigarette holder he’s dropped inside. He pulls the case from his pocket and flips it open so she can take a second smoke. He helps with the match again. Grey takes a long drag then stands.
She exhales then says: “Well, if we are using fresh eyes …" She smiles at him.
He smiles back. "Stop it."
"If I'm just trying to look at this as some kind of puzzle to solve, I still don’t know where to start. We still don’t know what is happening."
McKibbon shakes his head. "No," he interjects. "Don’t focus on the what. We’ll get to the what. Focus on the who or the why. That will get you to the how and the what.”
Confusion wrinkles Grey’s nose. “I don’t understand how starting with who or why is any better. I don’t know the answer to those things either.”
“Just play along.” McKibbon blows a stream of smoke into the middle of the room. “Spitball with me the whys. Why would someone want Zulu shut down? What’s the benefit?”
Nothing comes. There is no benefit to Zulu being pulled offline, abandoned. It doesn't hold any kind of special equipment. The reactor that powers it is small compared to other stations. It's position, other than being far out, doesn't hold any kind of strategic significance.
Grey just shakes her head.
“Is Zulu in the way of anything?” McKibbon asks. “Does my little squadron of fighters pose a threat to anyone? Keep them from doing something they want to do?”
Grey shakes no again. “No offense, but your little squadron wouldn’t scare someone who has plans that include taking a station offline.”
“No offense taken. But there has to be some reason we can come up with.” McKibbon stands and begins to pace around the small room, doing tight circles. Watching him is making Grey dizzy.
“Can you sit?”
He finds his spot next to her on the couch.
“And we’re sure that this isn’t some kind of mechanical failure? Something didn’t go wrong in one of the systems and that’s started all of this?”
“Are we sure? I don’t suppose so. We didn’t get any warning bells, but my team can’t find anything to indicate that something went wrong ahead of things starting to shut down.”
McKibbon pushes his feet out in front of him and slides his back deeper into the couch’s thin cushions.
“This is frustrating. There has to be some reason, because stations don’t shut down until …”
Grey finishes the thought: “...they are told to.”
“So who would tell Zulu to shut down?”
Grey thinks for a moment then shrugs. “I’ve got the same answer here. I don’t know.”
She sees McKibbon begin to say something then pause, like he’s swallowing words. He’s measuring his thoughts. Limiting his speech.
He’s frustrated. I’m frustrated.
“Again,” he begins, “we just need to puzzle this out.”
He reaches for the cigarette holder and pulls out the next to last cigarette. He lights it. He pulls the smoke deep into his lungs. He hangs onto it for a second then lets it out of his mouth. The world turns gray in front of him.
“I know I’m not being helpful,” Grey says while McKibbon does this. “But I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. It’s all that’s been in my head. If I had answers. If I had any ideas I would share them with you. But I don’t. My station is going to die, and I can’t stop it.”
McKibbon shakes his head while she speaks. “None of that talk. We are smart people, you and I. We’ll figure this out.”
He takes another drag on his cigarette, this one shorter and shallower.
“Who wants Zulu dead? Who does that benefit?”
“Isn’t that just asking the same question?”
“This is who. That was why. Different perspective.”
“One of the pilots?”
“My pilots?”
“Of the ships that come here. Not the ones stationed here.”
McKibbon looks relieved. “Why would one of them want Zulu to shut down?”
“I don’t know,” Grey looks for a place to put out what’s left of her cigarette. She stands and walks to the kitchen. “They’ve stashed something here. A body. Some kind of loot. I don’t know. Something they don’t want others to see.”
She drops her cigarette into the sink. “Sorry. That’s dumb.”
McKibbon shakes his head. “No. It’s not. Any theory is viable. But is it probable?”
“That one’s not,” Grey says as she sits back down. “A pilot’s going to know their ship. Intimately. They aren’t going to know Zulu. Not well enough to do this kind of thing.”
“OK. So, if it’s not a visitor to Zulu, then is it someone already here?”
Grey shakes off the suggestion. “No,” she says. “It’s no one here. No one would do this to Zulu. It’s their home as much as it is ours.”
“What about Lebbe?”
“I haven’t seen him all day. I don’t have any idea what he thinks.”
“No,” McKibbon says.
Grey looks at him, studies his face for a moment before McKibbon repeats himself. Slower this time.
“What ABOUT Lebbe?”
“What about Lebbe,” Grey repeats under her breath.
She considers it. “No,” she says.
More thinking then repeats; “No.” With more conviction this time. “It’s not him. It’s not Jim.”
“If you say so.”
She shifts in her seat to face him. “Why?” She asks. “What are you thinking?”
“Just about the things you’ve said about him. Counting down the days until his contract ends. You two have never gotten along, and it’s clear that he doesn’t think you know what you’re doing. Maybe, and this is just a maybe as a possibility, he wanted to accelerate his timeline a bit, get off of Zulu early.”
Grey is quiet. She’s running this theory over in her mind.
Could it be Lebbe? No. But …
She begins remembering conversations with Lebbe. They are stringing together in her mind like some poorly edited flashback montage in the cheap movies they beam out this far. He’s talking to her in the middle of Zulu’s main floor and she’s dismissing his concerns. They are waiting for food at the counter of The Quickstop and he’s telling her again about how he’s over-qualified for this posting. And another time when he’s complaining to Frank a little too loudly about how he’s miserable here and that he needs to find a way off.
She thinks about today. About how he wasn’t overly helpful when she did talk to him, but mostly about how this guy who always seems to be under her feet has been conveniently absent most of this day when his presence would actually be valuable.
She turns back to McKibbon.
“OK,” she says. “It could be Lebbe.”
SIXTEEN
Lebbe runs down the dark hall, full sprint. He keeps his focus on the light that’s sliding between the door and the jamb. He wants to dive headlong into that gap and slide through it like some character from those cartoons he’d watch with Sarah in the early mornings.
She’d just be getting up. He’d just be getting home. They’d eat cereal and milk on the couch with the volume t
urned all the way down. Some droopy-faced dog and a big-eared cat would be off on an adventure around a neighborhood where the grass seemed too green, the trees too tall, and the homes too brightly painted.
Sarah would voice the dog, doing her best to drop her high-pitched little girl voice down to a man’s deep bass and missing by a mile. She made him sound mopey and sad.
Lebbe voiced the cat, and the cat was the opposite. His big ears bounced when he talked. Lebbe gave him a springy voice and a slight stutter.