by S. E. Smith
And that little girl, one arm reaching for her dropped doll, flailing once, twice, in slow motion before she stopped moving. The doll, the child, now still as they drifted apart, floating away with the rest of the bodies and all their possessions into empty space.
A comet tail of humanity.
Then I was alone on Glenn-Musk in absolute silence. Eyelashes crusted with ice. The comm in my chest pocket buzzing over and over as the incoming shuttle tried to reach me…
I’ve read the accounts of those who survived decompression accidents. In all of history, only a few lived to tell about the experience. Those people I had wait for the shuttle? They all died. But here’s what I know. Awareness lasts for ten to fifteen seconds in the vacuum of space. Fifteen seconds of knifing cold, the agony of bodily fluids coming to a boil. Fifteen seconds knowing they’re going to die. Fifteen seconds of seeing me, their supposed rescuer, observing them from safely behind a pressure door…
Yeah. That’s how I know so much about hell.
Personal Log, Lieutenant Lukas Frank
After being shown hell, I never expected I’d find heaven. But I did—in the form of a starpilot named Captain Carlynn Riga.
It started with Bang-Bang, the dog I adopted, tugging on the lead. That wasn’t like him. Months of military K-9 training administered jointly by me and also the ESF Air Force K-9 unit on board the station had made Bang-Bang as much of a disciplined warrior as any of us. But Bang-Bang stood with his ears pricked and his eyes laser-sharp on something across the street. We were on patrol in a district of the colony popular with off-worlders. Some of the bars had set up tables outside. Every last seat was filled with tradesmen, galactic wanderers, and those who were permanently posted on Bezos station. Other than drunks (usually the locals or Federation cargo hauler types) or petty thievery like pickpockets (always the locals) not much in this part of town usually required direct intervention by me or my people.
Bang-Bang swung around to look up at me, making that grumbling noise he does that makes it sound like he’s trying to speak. Apparently telling him to “heel” wasn’t the reaction he wanted. He took my pants leg in his teeth and tugged. Come on, he seemed to say. I jerked on the lead to get him to cut it out, although I always feel a little guilty about applying Earth-based K-9 training techniques to a creature as bright as Bang-Bang. And still he pulled on the lead, clearly intent on dragging me through a throng of partiers toward the nearest drinking hole! Then my platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Vu, spoke up. “Those starpilots. Sweet.” He pointed across the street, and Bang-Bang wagged his tail hard, like he’d been waiting for one of us to figure it out.
I wouldn’t have thought of using the word “sweet” and “starpilot” in the same sentence. But sure enough two very attractive female starpilots dressed in smart blue-and-silver uniforms sat at one of the tables. Sipping drinks, they were having a good time. One was tall and athletic-looking with light brown hair and coltish limbs, but I zeroed in on the shorter, curvier, darker-haired one. It was hard not to notice her. It wasn’t only the way her ponytail gleamed in the fake sunlight generated by the dome covering the colony, or how her entire body participated when she spoke—from her hands to her shapely ass, even her ponytail, which swished side to side as she reacted to something her friend said. It was the way she went all-in when she laughed, throwing her head back and holding her stomach when her friend told her what must have been a funny story. A stream of people dropped by their table to chat, seeming to be just as drawn to her as I was. I didn’t know yet how many friends she had or how well-liked she was on Bezos Station. She would touch them when she conversed, accentuating her words with a pat or a push; even a hug when one of the male pilots from the Bezos shuttle squadron leaned close to say hello before moving on.
I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her. I was that enchanted. I’m not the kind of guy who gets enchanted. Until that moment, the word wasn’t even in my vocabulary.
My next thought was that she was a good girl, not the kind who goes around with a man like me. Crazy that before I even had the chance to say a single word to her, I assumed she would see me as the guy from the wrong side of town. Which, of course, I am. I learned early on that the good girls did not take up with the troublemakers, the ones that ran wild in the streets like I used to do as an angry, rebellious teen. Girls like her had parents, chores, homework, and ate dinner together at the table. They had the same family from beginning to end, not families swapped out every few years or, sometimes, every few months. Good girls went on to college; they had the wits and smarts and the right tools to get into flight school and, ultimately, to end up right where this woman was now—an elite starpilot serving on Earth’s largest space station.
“Sir…”
I blinked at Sergeant Vu’s voice, as if coming out of a deep trance.
“Where the hell did you go, Lieutenant?” He was laughing as he said it.
Shit. Nowhere I should’ve been. Then that good girl swiveled around to look in my direction. Our eyes connected across a crowded street on an alien planet forty-three light-years from home, and nothing has ever again been the same.
Personal Log, Captain Carlynn Riga
I always thought love at first sight was a ridiculous concept…until it happened to me yesterday…
My best friend Trysh and I sat at an outdoor table at a bar on the surface of Barésh. She said I needed to check out a couple of cute soldiers on patrol. So I took a gander. Super-short haircuts, square jaws, killer bodies wrapped in Interplanetary Marine uniforms, with a K-9 in tow. Their black-and-gray camouflaged ESF uniforms made it hard to tell what rank they wore, but my immediate assumption was that they were enlisted men. Forbidden fruit. We could look all we wanted but we couldn’t touch, since fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel is frowned upon. But, the dog wasn’t off limits. It looked like a yipwag, but was groomed and well fed. Not like the poor scrawny strays you see darting everywhere in this impoverished colony. It seemed to smile at me, its tongue hanging out, its eyes shining. I smiled back, winked, and it tipped its head to the side. “Aw. I want it,” I told Trysh.
“Before you get too attached, it’s a K-9. Trained to kill,” she said.
Death by cuteness, then. It was tethered to the taller of the two men, the one with dark blond hair who was built like a truck and had biceps thicker than my thighs. But he didn’t swagger. He carried himself with a quiet, intense watchfulness. A protector doing his job. What a nice change to see a great-looking man with an air of humbleness about him rather than acting as if he were the center of his universe.
It got even better when he lifted one of his hands to rub the back of his neck and his rolled-up sleeve revealed a tantalizing peek at some nice body art. I immediately regretted being too far away to make out the details. All his details.
I sighed as I turned back to Trysh. “I have to say, Blondie is pretty easy on the eyes.”
We giggled about it. Then Trysh stopped in the middle of sipping her drink. “Don’t look now but Blondie’s locked on. He’s looking at you, girl. Hard.”
So of course I turned around to peek—and swapped gazes with the Marine. His eyes were a steal-your-breath, butterflies-inducing shade of blue that was ice cold and blazing hot at the same time. Rebellious and wild, and yet mournful, too, like those of a lone wolf. He didn’t glance away, which might have been the mannerly thing to do. Instead, he stood there, looking at me, his eyes totally unguarded, allowing rapid-fire glimpses into his soul the way a dealer shuffles cards, flashing their suits.
Then his dog jerked him forward and practically dragged him across the street with his partner in tow. Blondie stopped right in front of me, standing there as if wondering how he ended up at our table.
The strangest feeling swept through me, of having waited my entire life to meet him. My insides cartwheeled. “Well, hello,” I said to break the silence.
“Good evening, Ma’am.” His eyes were hooded now. He reminded me of a poke
r player who realized he may have accidentally revealed his cards.
Then his K-9 plopped down in front of me, a furry chin landing in my hands after a few affectionate licks on my wrists. There were no secrets caged in those adoring yellow eyes. “What’s your name, cutie pie?” Its wagging tail generated a breeze.
“That’s Bang-Bang.” Blondie sounded frustrated. “I don’t get it. He’s never done this before.”
“Never?” I asked the dog as I scrubbed its coarse fur with my fingers. “I thought you were a big, bad military police K-9, but you’re not. You’re adorable, and sweet.” Bang-Bang and I bonded a bit before I collected myself enough to zoom in on the small gold metal bars pinned on the Marine’s collar tabs. “And you’re…a lieutenant.” Ugh. Could I have uttered anything more awkward?
“Yes, Ma’am, he is,” said his sergeant proudly. “That’s Lieutenant Frank. The Lieutenant Frank. He’s the one who—”
“Lukas,” Blondie interrupted, quelling his partner’s outburst with a sideways move of those wolf eyes. “Lukas Frank.”
Lukas Frank. I knew it sounded familiar. But I also knew I definitely would have remembered if I’d met him before. Introductions went around. “You’re a little old for a lieutenant, Lukas. You must be prior enlisted.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I was. Master sergeant, in fact. Now I’m a thirty-one-year-old second lieutenant. That makes me the oldest butter bar on the station.”
“Maybe in the entire ESF Corps.”
He laughed at my joke. “No doubt, Ma’am.”
It felt strange having such a normal conversation after what I saw in his eyes. I told him since I was only twenty-six there would be no more ma’am-ing. Even though as a captain I outrank him, technically. But that wasn’t a deal breaker. He was outside my direct chain of command. No wedding band circled his finger. And he seemed interested. I saw no barriers preventing me from getting to know him better.
“I guess I have just one more question, Lukas,” I said, using a flirtatious tone to cover up how much he had unsettled me. “What are you doing after you get off work?”
His wolf eyes glinted. “Buying you a drink.”
A few hours later, at the end of Lukas’s shift, we boarded the shuttle to return to the station. Bang-Bang leaned against my leg. I loved the way his eyes drooped half closed and his tongue dangled as I scratched behind his big, pointed ears. By then, Trysh and I were a wee bit tipsy, while Lukas was, of course, stone-cold sober. Sitting in the seat across from me, he observed me with an expression of contented wonder, as if I were some new exotic species he’d discovered. It charmed me beyond belief. But when the shuttle’s engines rumbled and it lifted away from the dock, he went pale, his focus turning to his fists in his lap.
“You don’t like flying,” I said.
He shook his head, this big strong Marine, and answered with a lopsided, sheepish smile. “Hate it.”
I loosened my shoulder harness and leaned across the space between us, sliding one hand over his. No words, just that simple contact. Warm skin. My small hand confident and protective as it rested over his two roughened, much larger ones. The sharp wildness in his gaze had subsided, but my touch reignited faint traces of it. I had awakened the wolf.
We spent the rest of the shuttle ride that way, my hand over his. When we commenced docking with Bezos Station a short while later, he placed my hand between his palms, capturing me with gentle pressure. I want you to be mine, his touch told me loud and clear. A shiver coursed through me, and I breathed a little faster. I wanted to be his, too.
Later, after he bought me a glass of wine in Nimbus, the station’s bar, he walked me back to my quarters, and never left.
Two
Bezos Station, ten months later…
“We have classified Captain Carlynn Riga and the research team on board the Starling as missing, pending further information.” The commander of the space station delivered the news to Lt. Lukas Frank with honest compassion. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
Missing. A former homeless street kid and now an Earth System Frontier Marine, Lukas was an expert at keeping shock from appearing on his face. “Aye, aye, Sir.” What more could he say? It was bad news. The worst news. The kind that kicked you square in the gut. As a combat vet, he was no stranger to death and destruction. Experience taught him that the status of “missing” often functioned as a bookmark until a body was recovered. But this time it was different.
This time it was personal.
Maintaining perfect military bearing, he listened as Colonel Duarte briefed him and other station staff on the facts of a mission gone wrong. “These are the last images transmitted from Vuushon,” Duarte said. “They show the Starling sitting on the surface with six of the eight team members working off-ship, but within the confines of the perimeter fence. Ops normal. Currently, cloud cover occludes further visuals. But we continue to receive their Emergency Locator Beacon signal via the orbital probe.”
Lukas already knew the punch line. Except for the ELB, there had been no additional communication. No radioed “mayday” calls from the ship. No responses to any of the urgent attempts at contact. Nothing. Now all eight crew members were unaccounted for. One of them was Captain Carlynn Riga, the mission’s command pilot.
His fiancée.
Lukas doubled-down on his effort to appear composed.
Views of a remote, uninhabited planet filled the screen. Herds of grass-eating beasts trundled across a parched savannah, headed north to where the crew of the Starling had touched down to study the effects of seasonal rains on migrations. Flocks of bulky, stork-like birds followed the herds. It looked like an effing nature show. Then the view cut back to an earlier drone-fed image of Carlynn’s ship sitting on the surface.
Colonel Duarte returned to his desk and sat down. He wore a waist-to-ankles bot-brace while the broken back he suffered in a jet crash healed, an injury that would have otherwise left him a paraplegic. Standing was painful for him, but he never showed it, never complained. Sitting down when he might have preferred to stand was his only capitulation. Although he had started out in the Air Force, he would have made a good Marine. “The entire team could very well be safe and sheltering in place, and that’s my hope. In the meantime, Dr. Vir and his team will work on restoring communication.”
“Indeed,” replied Marrkam Vir, a civilian science officer and one of several Vash serving on exchange duty from the Trade Federation. The extraterrestrial spoke English as a courtesy. Basic was the official language on board Bezos Station, one of the requirements when the Federation handed over the keys to it to help Earth supervise its neighborhood (on a light-year scale). Gifts like space stations, cures for diseases like cancer, and the ability to reverse paralysis caused by spinal cord injuries like Colonel Duarte’s had solidified a shaky start to their almost nine-year-old alliance. “Several factors may be inhibiting access. Atmospheric interference due to heavy weather, power interruption on the ship, damage to the ship, or, at worst case, destruction of the ship—” The science officer cleared his throat, his gaze swinging to Lukas in apologetic acknowledgement of his close personal connection to Carlynn. “But certainly a more benign explanation may be the case.”
“We’ll continue to hope and pray for the best possible outcome,” Commander Duarte broke in. “Until we have more information, this will be a rescue mission and not a recovery mission.”
Recovery mission. The words seemed to come from far away, words that could not possibly relate to Carlynn…
Duarte’s dark eyes studied him. “If you need anything, Lukas, let me know.” He nodded at the chaplain. “The padre is here for you, as am I—”
“Not necessary. But thank you, Sir.” Lukas braced at attention. “Request permission to be dismissed. We’ve got a tight window.”
Lukas’s company commander, Captain Lindscomb, spoke in undertones out the side of his mouth. “Are you sure you want to do this? With the potential of distraction and loss of objectivity because of yo
ur personal relationship to Carlynn…”
“The mission comes first, Sir. There’s no question of me staying behind.”
“No. I suppose not. I realize we’re talking about Lukas Frank here—”
“I’m just a Marine, Sir. A Marine like anyone else.”
Lindscomb pushed out a quick, incredulous laugh, a reaction shared by Duarte and the others in the office, who joined him in shaking their heads at Lukas’s self-effacing comment. “If only we were all like you, Lieutenant. But, all that aside, be aware of your own limitations.”
The colonel had no idea just how recently Lukas had collided head-on with his own limitations. Please let it not be too late. Squaring his shoulders, he redoubled his efforts not to reveal any of what churned inside him. With a searching, concerned look, Duarte seemed to poke at the barrier Lukas had erected around himself. Then he exhaled, nodding, as if understanding the futility of any attempt to breach the wall. “All right, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”
With one neat, crisp step backward, Lukas saluted. “Aye, aye, Sir.” He nodded at the rest of the sober assembled group. Pivoting away, he strode out of the office.
Bang-Bang waited for him by the doors, holding a sitting position where Lukas had left him during the briefing. The white tip of his tail batted against the floor, slowing as his yellowish, old-soul eyes zeroed in on the turmoil inside Lukas that the station’s staff could not see.