Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space

by Stephen Euin Cobb

  Praise for

  BONES BURNT BLACK:

  Serial Killer in Space

  “A riveting and realistic portrayal of space travel gone wrong, and of a crew who must fight for their survival. Bones Burnt Black is exciting, and expertly told. A must-read.”

  J.C. Hutchins, author of the 7th Son series

  “Without a doubt one of the most entertaining and believable science fiction books I’ve ever read.”

  Janine K. Spendlove, author of the War of the Seasons series

  “Stephen Euin Cobb has achieved an excellent cross-genre work in Bones Burnt Black. This is much like an Agatha Christie plot, with a stalker hunting down the victims one by one and Cobb handles this very well. Bones Burnt Black is a mystery, it is science fiction and it is a great page turner. If you enjoyed books like Caves of Steel or movies like Ten Little Indians, you should read this book. You will find that science and murder can be a powerful fusion.”

  Colleen R. Cahill, writing for the SFRevu

  Bones Burnt Black:

  Serial Killer in Space

  by

  Stephen Euin Cobb

  Additional Novels by Stephen Euin Cobb

  Skinbrain: Secrets of the Rolling Head Tormented by the Ocean that Chases its Moon

  Plague at Redhook: Life Extension Without End

  Nonfiction by Stephen Euin Cobb

  Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science

  A Brief History of Predicting the Future

  Bones Burnt Black:

  Serial Killer in Space

  Copyright 2004 by Stephen Euin Cobb

  www.SteveCobb.com

  (V17-c2-toc1)

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  This Kindle edition contains the complete text of the original paperback edition, which was published by August Press in 2004.

  The paperback edition’s ISBN: 0-967034671

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004092497

  Contents

  Human Tumbleweed

  Valley of the Shadow of Death

  Ghost of Apollo

  Black Thimble

  Gathering of Foes

  Cold Food

  Homecoming

  Screams in the Dark

  Whispers of Long Ago

  Eye for an Eye

  Silent Answers

  Nomads of the Corvus Desert

  Stalking Shadows

  Out of the Frying Pan

  Molten Rain

  Skin Deep

  Too Close an Inspection

  Food and Frost and Memories Lost

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Human Tumbleweed

  Through her closed eyelids, a red light glared painfully bright. Almost awake, she thought, Turn it off!

  The light vanished and took with it the pain, but then it came back, bright and red and stabbing. She cringed and squirmed and bared her teeth. “Turn it off!”

  The light went dark.

  Voice sounds strange, she thought. It had echoed claustrophobically, as if her head were in a bucket. Yet the echo also seemed somehow familiar, as though she’d heard it many times before. Puzzling over this drew her a few steps closer to wakefulness.

  Sluggishly, she eased her eyes open; and just as they opened the light came back—white now instead of red, and a hundred times brighter without eyelids to filter it. She squeezed her eyes shut in a useless attempt to end the pain.

  “Cut it out! I’m awake!” She raised her hands and covered her face, and was further confused when a barrier prevented her palms from traveling the last few inches to touch the skin of her nose and forehead.

  The light went out, but within seconds was back.

  “I said, ‘turn it off!’” Angry now, she swung an arm to slap the light source away. Missing it made her feel foolish, which elevated her anger toward rage. Even so, she managed to notice the stiff texture and heavy mass of the material covering her arm, hand, and shoulder. She also recognized the unmistakable stench of sweaty vinyl.

  I’m in a vacuum suit.

  The next time the light went out she glanced around to learn where she was. Black sky surrounded her; black sky dotted with stars. The stars were in motion—all traveling downward toward her feet. Somewhat less than immediately, she realized it wasn’t the stars that were moving.

  Her slow endless back-flip again brought her around to face the sun. Squinting, she shaded her eyes against its light with a pair of green-gloved hands.

  Why am I outside?

  Looking about in every direction, she tried to locate the large orbiting city which was the last place she recalled working. She did not see it. Where’s Huygens Colony?

  Then she realized her sky was not dominated by a huge red-orange cloud-covered moon. Where’s Titan?

  Searching for the giant ringed planet, which should have appeared as large as a grapefruit held at arm’s length, revealed that it too was missing. Where the hell is Saturn?

  She paused a second, then turned the question upside-down. Where the hell am I?

  The soft, easily ignored, drum-beat of her pulse began to race in the base of her neck—and by racing, thumped louder. The recurring pain of sunlight inside her eyes was now joined by a new pain—sharp and deep—in the center of her chest.

  Got to calm down! She pressed both hands against her gadget-covered ribcage. Mom had her first heart attack at twenty-nine: when she was my age exactly. This is no time to have a coronary!

  Monitoring the beat in her neck, she closed her eyes and concentrated on trying to relax. As soon as she estimated her pulse was below one hundred and twenty she proceeded to the next logical step.

  Sliding a gloved hand up to the right side of her helmet’s base, she verified that her suit radio was on. “This is—” She cleared her throat. “This is—” She blinked her eyes. “This is—” She paused again.

  The drum-beat picked up speed. Who the hell am I?

  _____

  “Ship!” shouted the captain, his voice old and gruff. “What’re the gees in here?”

  The computer that controlled the spacecraft said, “One point nine; inverted.”

  The captain’s head and hands and feet all pointed upward toward the center of the bridge dome. Hanging from his seat belt like a lumpy towel draped over a clothesline, he grimaced. “I’m getting a headache.”

  “Captain,” said the ship, “your blood is accumulating in your feet and head. You may be in danger of blacking out. I recommend you get out of your command chair and drop to the ceiling.”

  “Too late for that. The dome’s over fifteen feet away. At two gees, I’d break my leg. Maybe worse.”

  “Captain, you must make the effort. I cannot stop or slow the ship’s tumbling. It will continue to tumble faster. In a few minutes the bridge will be experiencing three and a half gees. That, multiplied by your body’s mass, will produce a force well above the rated strength of your seat belt. If you wait until it breaks you will fall to the ceiling and surely die. If you drop now… Well, at least the results will be less predictable.”

  The captain rubbed his forehead with the fingertips of both hands. A thick bulldog of a man, he must have been a powerhouse in his prime. He was white-haired now; in his early sixties but still had the broad shoulders, muscular arms and large hands of his youth. His face was wide, and his square jaw even wider. But compared to his shoulders, arms and han
ds; his hips, legs and feet seemed genuinely undersized. He wasn’t fat, yet he had a round little belly that poked out between his belt and the bottom of his ribcage. He glanced around the bridge trying to think of an alternate method of getting to the ceiling from his chair.

  The bridge of the spaceship Corvus was nearly half the width of the ship and resembled a planetarium in that it had a round floor, a white hemispherical ceiling and no windows. Its only visible furnishings were three large gray command chairs: each shaped like an oversized recliner forever leaning back to direct its occupant’s attention upward at the dome.

  The dome was capable of presenting dozens of full color, full motion, full 3-D images simultaneously. Images which could be of any size or shape, and appear anywhere on the ceiling’s curved surface.

  Not having identified another way down, the captain rubbed his forehead even harder. “What’re the gees?”

  “Two point one.”

  “Great.” Pulling his hands down to his waist, he tried opening the seat belt’s closure mechanism, but with twice the weight of his body pressing against it, it refused to let go. He struggled, frantically. “I can’t get it open!”

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “You know damn well I don’t have a— Aaaaah!”

  The seat belt snapped open.

  As the captain fell upward from his command chair the tension on the seat belt whipped its metal buckle painfully across the bones in the back of his hand. This pain, however, was quickly drowned in a raging flood of greater pains as his body crashed to the domed ceiling.

  The seat belt’s imperfect release had rolled him sideways, causing him to land on his left side. He impacted with a bouncing whiplash-like motion: first his leg, then his hip, arm, shoulder and head.

  “Captain,” the ship said, “what is your condition?”

  There was no reply.

  “Captain, can you hear me?”

  But again there was no reply.

  _____

  She was starting to panic again; starting to feel the pain deep inside her chest; then she remembered. Kim! My name is Kim!

  “This is Kim Kah— Kim Kh, Kh— Kim Kirkland! This is Kim Kirkland of the spacecraft—” But again she was stuck.

  The only ship she could remember being a crewmember of was the Sagittarius, but somehow it felt like a long time had passed since she’d worked the Earth/Mars transport.

  “This is Kim Kirkland calling anyone. Anyone, please respond.” She waited for over a minute, but there was no answer. She switched to the emergency channel. “This is Kim Kirkland calling Mayday, Mayday. I repeat: this is Kim Kirkland calling Mayday.”

  Still nothing.

  She transmitted again several times but after ten minutes without an answer decided she was out here on her own.

  The cyclic headache inside her eyes had migrated to the back of her head and expanded to torment the rear half of her skull. My head is killing me! Why?

  Running a few glove-covered fingers over the outer surface of her helmet, she discovered a dent three fingers wide located above and behind her right ear. This explained both the pain in her head and the mysterious radio silence. The vacuum suit’s radio transceiver was mounted on the inside surface of her helmet just under that dent. Whatever put the dent in her helmet had also slammed the transceiver into the side of her skull—presumably damaging both her and it in the process.

  Putting her hand down, she sighed deeply. Her exhaled breath struck the helmet’s faceplate and curled back toward her eyes and ears. It tickled her eyelashes and ruffled the loose blonde hairs that framed her face. Ignoring these sensations, she returned to an earlier question: Where am I?

  The sun is much too bright for the outer solar system. She tried to estimate its angular diameter and hence its distance. Looks like I’m somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Venus. Maybe near Earth.

  Looking around for a star that on closer examination would appear as a small disk—indicating it was really a planet—yielded nothing. This didn’t worry her. She couldn’t land safely on a planet with nothing more than a vacuum suit. What she needed was a ship.

  She looked around again, more carefully this time, examining every bright star, hoping one wasn’t just a point of light but an irregular shape, lumpy or elongated, which would indicate it was a nearby spacecraft and presumably the spacecraft from which she was currently on EVA. But none of the bright stars showed any visible detail.

  It occurred to her that her ship might be silhouetted against the face of the sun, or—if she’d been unconscious long enough—that it might be far enough away to appear as one of the dimmer stars: a mere shapeless speck. The first of these two possibilities might be impossible to overcome, but the second she could handle by making a simple change in her search strategy.

  She looked at the sky’s constellations for a star that should not be there: a star that wasn’t part of the normal sky. If she found one, bright or dim, it would just about have to be the spacecraft she had been aboard. That or—

  There!

  She looked more closely.

  That’s it!

  Orion, the hunter, had mysteriously gained weight. His belt was a line of four stars instead of its usual three. The extra star showed no detail and was slightly dimmer than the traditional stars of the belt. It’s a ship, an asteroid, or a planet too far off to show a disk. There’s just no way to be sure.

  She searched the constellations for any additional extra stars but found none.

  Guess I don’t have much choice but to assume it’s my ship. Just have to head for it and hope I’m not wasting nitrogen.

  Reaching down to the large pocket on the front of her left thigh, she tore open its Velcro closure and pulled out something which resembled an eight inch long aluminum hotdog with no bun. She strapped it to the back of her right forearm and adjusted its straps for tightness.

  Containing only compressed nitrogen gas, the little jet pack’s thrust would be tiny. But by foregoing combustion it required no ignition system and could be safely used in any emergency—even near open fuel leaks. After two decades of successful use, its design was now considered very nearly fool-proof.

  First things first.

  Before attempting to aim herself at the extra star, she needed to stop her tumbling. Not only was it annoying but it would severely limit the accuracy of her aim during the thrust maneuver. So she directed the jet pack’s exhaust nozzle—which was near her wrist—upward above her head by bending her arm as though showing off a powerful biceps muscle and pressed the jet pack’s release valve.

  No burst of gas exited its nozzle.

  She pressed the release again.

  Still nothing.

  Twisting her arm as far as she could within the limitations of the vacuum suit, she examined the pack’s canister and spotted a small cone-shaped dent in its curved aluminum wall. At the bottom of the dent was a tiny puncture. Thing’s empty! All the nitrogen’s escaped!

  The extra star, accompanied by a host of normal stars, once again moved downward through her field of vision. If it really is a ship it must be twenty or more miles away. Without any propellant it might just as well be a billion.

  _____

  Slowly, and without any other movement, the white-haired old captain opened his eyes. As the mists cleared from his mind and he began to recall the how and why of his location he, very carefully, and still moving only his eyes, looked around at his upside-down bridge. He was tempted to turn his head and glance up at his empty command chair but the various pains pulsing and meandering within his body made him fear that this might not be a good thing to do. Instead, he tried to shift his weight just enough to pull his left arm out from under his chest. He succeeded only in creating a wave of pain that expanded to fill his entire universe.

  That was a mistake he did not intend to repeat.

  When he once again possessed control of his mouth he whispered, “Get me Mike. And make it voice-only. I don’t want him to see me.” />
  Seconds later a new voice echoed on the bridge. “Larry, what’s with all these upside-down g-forces?”

  To instill confidence, the captain spoke as loud as he dared. Even so, this was just above a whisper. “Mike, we’ve got some serious problems. I want you to go get that passenger in cabin 5-B. She’s an exobiologist—an ivory-tower type—doesn’t know a thing about spacecraft. Take her to the ship’s center: deck ten. The gee forces will be weakest there.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Just do it. I’ll explain when you get there. And Mike, hurry.”

  “But what if she doesn’t want to go?”

  The captain was making unsightly faces in response to the various pains shooting back and forth through his body. He tried to keep this to a minimum as he spoke for fear it would show in his voice. “Tell her that her life depends on it. If she still won’t go— I don’t know, hit her in the head with something and drag her there by her feet. Captain: out and clear.”

  The taste of blood had grown strong in his mouth. He decided to wait until later to push each of his teeth with his tongue to discover which were loose. “Ship, send a message to Von Braun.”

  “To our dispatcher at Hyperbolic Shipping?”

  “No, you idiot! SpaceGuard! And use the emergency channel.” He strained his eye muscles trying to look at the images still displayed on the surface of the dome. Because of the angle at which his head rested he could see only the image nearest him, the one pressing cold and hard against his left cheekbone. Viewed at this range the image was highly distorted and hopelessly grainy—so much so that he couldn’t even be sure what it depicted. “Tell them our situation. Send them the recorded images from Kim’s headset and any other information that will help them understand what’s going on out here. Request assistance and an immediate reply.”

  “Aye, Captain. I’m swinging the high gain antenna around now. Transmission in— in— Captain, the ship is tumbling six times faster than the antenna’s motors are capable of re-aiming it. I cannot keep it directed at Von Braun.”

  “Damn!” He thought for a moment. “What about using one of the low gain antennas?”

  “Low gain antennas are not intended for communication at this distance. Once the signal reached Von Braun it would be extremely weak.”