No Man's Land (Defending The Future)

by Jennifer Brozek

  “Real bad,” Soolee agreed. “That’s the hydroponics ring.”

  Natara turned to her classmate. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  “We need to report this.”

  “Please, I really need to talk to Guardsman Harber,” Natara tried to keep her voice level and professional as she faced the guardsman in the doorway to CnC. Behind him, hunched over their consoles and talking in quiet, tense voices, were the Command and Control personnel and Guardsman Harber.

  “Cadets, you’re supposed to be in your quarters,” Guardsman Oberman said with little patience. He eyed them up and down with irritation. “You need to be elsewhere. We don’t have time for inconsequentials.”

  “But this is important.” Soolee insisted, disregarding Oberman’s fearsome glare, as she remained at attention before him.

  Inside Natara cringed. She knew this old Guardsman could only see a couple of young girls, much less mere cadets, and not the trained Guardsmen they were becoming. She wished Soolee had not said anything at all. He wanted and needed details.

  His eyes narrowed. “What is so important that two cadets need to interrupt someone in the middle of an attack?”

  “There’s an unknown ship. It landed on the station but not—“

  Oberman interrupted Natara, “There are thousands of ship types out there. I’m not surprised you don’t know one. The Guardsmen in CnC have a handle on things. They know what’s coming and going.”

  “But—“

  “But nothing, Cadet. I’ve read your MOVE file, Kintares. I admire your enthusiasm but this is neither the time nor the place for it. I’ve also read about your tendency to bend the rules. That doesn’t fly on a real space station and we will discuss this on our shift tomorrow. Count on it.” He raised a finger to forestall another protest. “One more word from either of you and I’ll have you both thrown into brig for disobeying a superior officer. Return to your quarters. That’s a direct order.“ He turned his back on them and shut the door to the control center in their faces.

  “Damn. What’d you do to him? Piss in his morning drink?” Soolee asked.

  “You idiot,” Natara muttered to the closed door and blew out a gusty sigh, “I’ve only had one shift with him but I get the impression he really doesn’t think females should be in the military, much less in CnC.”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “Not talk to the Cadre, that’s for sure.” Natara wondered what else was in her MOVE file. Then her scowl turned into a smile devoid of joy. “We’re going to deal with this ourselves. Are there any back ways into the hydroponics ring? The section that the ship landed on?”

  “Oh, yeah. Lots. I’ve been spending most of my time doing maintenance in them. You wouldn’t believe how dirty hydroponics can get.”

  Natara looked at Soolee’s smudged face and half-smiled. “Yeah I can. Let’s go.”

  Within minutes, the two of them made their way to the hydroponics ring, avoiding as many of the station personnel as possible. The one time they did run into someone, they bluffed the Guardsman into ignoring them by pretending to be on an errand.

  “Guardsman Rillion will have our heads if we don’t get this to hydroponics maintenance yesterday. Come on!” Soolee said and pulled Natara’s arm. The Guardsman barely looked at the cadets as they quickened their pace, passing him in the hallway.

  Natara let Soolee pull her along until they reached a door marked: Maintenance 26-D. Soolee waved her ID bracelet next to the security pad and they were rewarded with the opening of the door. Once inside, the two of them breathed a sigh of relief. “Ok. We’re good now,” Soolee said. “All we have to do is slip into the maintenance tunnel that leads into the garden.”

  “What do you maintain in the tunnels?”

  “The water lines, nutrition to the plants. That sort of thing. Why?”

  “Just wondering how dirty it’ll be.”

  Soolee rolled her eyes, “Not very. They run a tight station here. At least, Rillion does on the hydroponics ring. ‘An ill-maintained garden makes for an ill space station.’ I’ll go first. I know where to pop out so it won’t be right next to where the ship landed.

  “Good. Then, I’ll take the lead.”

  True to her word, the maintenance tunnel was small but relatively clean. There were no leaky pipes and no puddles of dank water. Still, it was not a comfortable place to be. Too short to stand, you had to crouch or crawl to move. It was slow going. The lighting was sparse and motion-sensitive so it felt like they were crawling in circles within a bubble of light.

  Still, Natara was impressed. Coming from an acquisitions base with water as the main export, she knew just how tough it was to keep containers and pipes completely watertight. Even so, crawling on hands and knees wasn’t the cleanest thing around and that’s what these tunnels required. Natara vowed not to tease Soolee about the dirt smudges again.

  Natara could have shouted for joy when they paused and Soolee took a small tool from her belt to unlock the maintenance panel. She did not like the dark, cramped space and mentally urged Soolee to move faster. But her companion worked in slow, silent motions to free them from the maintenance tunnel. Once unlocked, Soolee pushed the panel out and slid it to the side, taking care to be as quiet as she could. Then she and Natara crawled out of the maintenance tunnel. Once out, they hunkered down and listened before Soolee replaced the panel. They could hear movement; soft, under the hum of the machinery around them.

  Soolee brought them to the far side of the hydroponics garden where the hanging plants, filled with ripening fruits and vegetables, hid them from view. The walls and ceiling sprouted with both plants and water spigots while the grated floor, littered with specialized hydroponics tools, revealed softly humming fans that kept the air moist and the room clear of plant debris.

  Natara crawled forward, parting the plants in front of her, and then stopped. She motioned Soolee to her. When the other girl came forward, she saw what stopped Natara. It was an Epiet. She could tell by his basic humanoid appearance, grayish skin, and the iridescent scales on his head and neck. He had two vials of liquid and was pouring the smaller one into the larger one, changing the liquid’s color from clear to murky green.

  “What’s he doing?” Natara asked, keeping her voice low. “What’s that thing he’s standing over?”

  “It’s one of the water sample valves. It feeds into the water supply for this garden.”

  The answer made Natara feel cold and then angry, “We need weapons.”

  Soolee pointed at two gardening tools on the floor nearby. One was a metal-handled net and the other was a pair of long-handled clippers. “Those do?”

  Natara nodded as Soolee crawled behind the hanging plants to get to the tools. She handed the cutters to Natara who dropped into Guardsman hand language and signed, “You go high. I go low.”

  Soolee nodded and stood up. Natara maintained her crouch and scuttled forward, through the plants into the open, staying low. The Epiet was fully involved in whatever he was doing to the water supply and did not see the two cadets creep up behind him. With a signaling yell, Natara dove low at the Epiet’s knees, swinging the clippers so that the metal head of the tool hit behind the Epiet’s right knee. At the same time, Soolee brought the net down over top of the intruder’s head and yanked backward, putting the Epiet off-balance.

  As the Epiet went down with a hiss of surprise and pain, he dropped both of the vials he was holding into the open water valve. On the ground, tangled in the net that Soolee held down on his head and neck, his hand went to his sidearm but Natara used the clippers to break his wrist with a single sharp blow. Soolee gave the Epiet two hard kicks to the head and the alien lay still. Natara took the sidearm from the Epiet’s unmoving body and stepped back.

  Both girls were panting with excitement and suppressed terror at what they had just done. Natara nodded, “Good. Good.” She looked at the weapon and then pointed it at the Epiet’s leg. The energy pulse struck the
Epiet but the alien did not move. Both cadets jumped at the sound the weapon made.

  “Seeder’s Balls, Nat! Why’d you do that?”

  “I needed to know if the weapon was bio-locked to the species. Besides that, the weapon fire should bring security.”

  Soolee crouched down over the Epiet. She placed her palm on the alien’s chest. “No heartbeat. But that doesn’t mean he’s dead. He may have dropped into stasis.”

  She nodded, “You should restrain him.”

  “Yeah,” Soolee agreed and rummaged around for tie down cords. “Why didn’t an alarm go off when that thing cut its way in?” she asked, cords in hand, working to restrain the unresisting Epiet.

  Natara looked at the opening in the space station wall, “There’s no pressure change. The ship must be sealed to the station. With no pressure change, there’s no hull breech to detect.” She walked to the opening and looked inside the Epiet’s ship.

  It was compact and highly sophisticated. There were three chambers that she could see. Probably a fourth one she could not. Natara recognized many of the Epiet language symbols but did not know enough of the language to understand the symbols on the doors.

  Soolee came up behind her. “He dropped the vials. I have to know what they were. Get an untainted sample. We need to know what he did to the water supply.”

  Natara nodded. “I’ve got to see what stealth programs are running. Security should’ve been here by now. Whatever technology it’s running, it has a larger radius than the ship.” She looked over her shoulder at the unmoving body of the Epiet. “He secure?”

  “Yeah. Five minutes. Five minutes to do what we can do and if we haven’t figured something out, we hand it over to security. Any longer is too dangerous for the station.”

  “Agreed.” Natara stepped into the Epiet vessel and put her hand on the pad next to the door nearest her. It opened with a soft hiss. “Control. Excellent. Check the other rooms.”

  She stepped into the control room of the small scout ship and marveled at its engineering. Every inch of space was used for controls, screens, and devices she had no hope of understanding in the five minutes they had given themselves. But she knew military intelligence would be all over a ship like this. There were blinking symbols, lights, and buttons everywhere. It was a lot to take in. As she stared at the pilot’s center, she heard a noise and turned around, whipping the Epiet gun up into a firing stance.

  “Natara?” Soolee’s voice sounded strange. “I found something. Could you come here?”

  Natara frowned. The five minutes was not up. She stepped to the doorway of the control room, keeping the Epiet weapon at her hip. “What is it?”

  “I…I found the samples. You need to see them.”

  “All right.” She stepped forward, cautiously looking into the doorway that Soolee stepped through. The tall redhead stood at an angle to the door, not looking at it. She was looking at something else in the room.

  For one instant, Natara was sure someone else was in the room with Soolee. In the next, she was positive she was being paranoid. Her next step told her that her gut instinct had been correct.

  Another smaller Epiet was in the corner of the room with a weapon pointed at Soolee while looking at the door. The Epiet opened its mouth to speak but Natara did not hesitate. She opened fire on the alien. The first shot missed, hitting the cabinet next to the Epiet’s shoulder. The second shot hit her in the chest. The Epiet got off one shot that grazed Natara’s left arm. Natara yelped in pain and fired again. She struck the Epiet in the chest again. This time, the Epiet dropped its weapon and slumped to the floor. As its last living act, the Epiet reached over and twisted something on its belt. The light in the small ship blinked from the standard white to an ominous yellow.

  Natara dropped the pistol and reached for her wounded arm, only to be stopped by Soolee grabbing her wrist. “Don’t. It’ll hurt worse if you touch it.”

  “It hurts now.”

  “Yeah. Well, it’ll stop hurting permanently if we don’t figure out what she just set off.”

  “She?”

  “Yeah. She. Small, more purple in the scales. My area of expertise.”

  Natara nodded and turned for the control room. Inside it, the main console displayed what clearly was a countdown. Everything was bathed in yellow light. “It’s a self-destruct.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Yeah.” She put her hands down on the glowing hand prints next to the display that had not been there before. Nothing happened. Her heart sped up. “Ideas?”

  “Hit the big yellow button there?”

  “You do it. My hands are full.”

  Soolee reached over and hit the yellow button in-between Natara’s hands. Again, nothing happened except the countdown continued to get smaller.

  Natara raced over ideas in her head. “I’ve got one last idea and then we run for it.” She turned from the glowing console and ran into the other room. Grabbing the dead Epiet by the arm she yanked the dead body toward her and dragged it through the ship back into the control room. As soon as Soolee saw what Natara was doing, she hurried to help. Between the two of them, they each managed to get the Epiet’s hands pressed to the glowing handprints. Natara slapped the large yellow button in the middle and prayed that it was the right thing to do.

  It was. The countdown disappeared and the light in the Epiet vessel returned to normal.

  Natara collapsed into the nearest seat and then jerked herself back into a standing position with her hands in the air as space station security personnel shouted for them to freeze and to identify themselves.

  Soolee responded first, “Soolee Moore, Cadet, Senior Class, 992-236-510-288.”

  “Natara Kintares, Cadet, Senior Class, 611-444-972-313,” Natara added on the heels of Soolee’s answer.

  The faceless security personnel in their combat helmets did not relax their guard as they pulled the cadets from the Epiet vessel. The girls saw that security was covering the male Epiet who was still down or unconscious while the female Epiet was dragged from the vessel and dropped to the floor next to her companion. They all stood there, cadets with their hands raised, covered by two security men while a third reported the situation.

  “Your sponsors, Guardsmen Harber and Rillion are on their way, Cadets. I hope you have a good explanation for what happened here,” the security officer said as he got off the com-unit.

  “We do, sir. It’s one for the books,” Natara said.

  “I’ll bet. At ease.”

  Soolee and Natara dropped into a semi-formal parade rest stance. They glanced at each other and smiled. Disobeyed orders or not, they saved Space Station Killingsworth from a sabotage attack and that was something that could never been taken away. If the two of them could just get through the next day with their skins intact, they would be all right and they would both have one hell of story about their MOVEs to tell their peers back home.

  TRASHING

  Phoebe Wray

  Four white cargo boxes, tethered together with titanium alloy, drifted languidly in space, gleaming brightly in the light of the G3 sun of the planet Targus. The holochart in United Targus Navy Battlecruiser Dark Star’s bridge showed them as a tiny spark against the immensity of space. They turned gently on their axis, and the ship’s scanners zoomed in on them.

  Commodore George W. Whittaker studied the display on his command chair. “They’re definitely cargo boxes, Kim.” His tac officer nodded. G. W., as he was called, pulled his nose and turned to his Exec. “Hal, alert The Gleaner and ready the pinnace.”

  “Aye, sir.” Hal carried out his commands as the battlecruiser came ever closer to the spinning trash.

  G. W. punched a comm on the arm rest of his command chair.

  In the liaison office amidships, Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Renn Haggarty straightened her back when the comm buzzed, making the star chart she was studying disappear as her screen filled with the commodore’s smiling face.

  She grinned back at him. “Good mo
rning, Skipper.”

  “Morning, Lieutenant. We’ve got a job for you.” The captain punched the images from the scanners into half of her screen. “Four garbage cans. No labels that we can see yet, but you’re going to go have a look. The pinnace will be in Boat Bay Two.”

  Renn nodded. “Aye, aye, sir!”

  The captain smiled and disappeared as the screen irised out. Renn shut down her module, closed up her cubicle, nodded briefly to the other staff on the deck, and headed quickly for her cabin to suit up.

  Her quarters aboard the Dark Star were modest, but better than most lieutenants could pull. It was, for one thing, private. In this man’s navy, most junior grade officers shared space with their equals, but she was on special duty, and that brought some perks.

  In five minutes she was out of uniform and into a specially-tailored ready suit. It fit skin-tight, included the standard, uncomfortable, plumbing, but would save her life should the space-suit she would wear to examine the trash be compromised. She looked at herself in the mirror, nodded, and headed for Boat Bay Two.

  The Dark Star and three other battlecruisers, plus two smaller battleships, were task force UTN742, the convoy escorting and protecting the immense garbage scow The Gleaner. Not that anyone expected trouble, despite the saber rattling of some sister planets in the home galaxy. Of course there were pirates, too, so the convoy was necessary.

  There was a lot of junk in space—debris from the occasional interstellar dust-ups, parts of dead satellites and ships, spent missiles, beacons, and real garbage jettisoned from planets running out of space to bury their waste. Much of it was valuable, and recycling it not only brought in millions of dollars but removed the debris from the paths of ships. Even a chip of paint, at a speed of 28,000 km/h, was dangerous, and could seriously damage anything it collided with in space.

  The Gleaner was nearly full, and had been heading back to Targus, Renn’s home planet, in fact, about three months out, when the unexpected garbage cans showed up. She hoped their contents merited the delay they would cause. She was due for some serious planet-side R&R after three years of hauling trash. She smiled, thinking of home, as she pushed the elevator button and descended to the immense hollow brightness of Boat Bay Two.