Dark Space

by Jasper T. Scott

  Ethan lined his ship up with the blinking green docking buoys, and stopped at the inspection point. While he waited, Ethan transmitted his ship’s remote access codes to the station, and then a nova fighter popped by and ran a quick scan on them. Once they were cleared by the Nova, the docking controllers acknowledged receipt of his codes and gave clearance for Ethan to enter the station’s landing pattern.

  As soon as the station’s pilots took remote control of his transport, Ethan turned to Alara and said, “Well, I guess this is goodbye.”

  Alara sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “I guess so.” Her voice sounded so flat and despondent that Ethan felt the need to comfort her.

  “Look, all hard feelings aside, this is what’s best for both of us. You’re right. You don’t deserve to be saddled with my debt. It’s my ship after all.”

  She turned to him then. “We racked up that debt together, Ethan.”

  “Well, consider it a gift, then. I’m joining the fleet, and Brondi can’t easily touch me there. This way, at least one of us is still free.”

  Alara nodded silently and turned back to look out at the stars. Ethan wasn’t sure what else he could say—what she wanted him to say—so he looked away, too. The station grew larger and larger before them until they spotted the amber glow of the hangar deck where they were being directed. Ethan watched the transport ahead of them duck inside the station, and then the station’s pilots took them in next, using the hangar’s grav guns to guide them straight into their berth.

  Ethan watched as the station’s docking tube snaked out toward them. Once it connected resoundingly with their hull, a cheery message came over the comm, “Welcome to Forliss Station! We hope you have a pleasant stay.”

  Ethan slung his travel bag over his shoulder, shut down his ship’s reactors, and walked aft. Alara was just a step behind him. He reached the amidships airlock and keyed the control panel to cycle it open. The inner airlock door opened with a hiss of equalizing air pressure, and Ethan walked inside.

  “So that’s it?” Alara demanded from the other side of the airlock. “After three years of friendship, you just drop me off at the nearest station, sell your precious ship, and enlist in the fleet?”

  Ethan offered her a helpless shrug. “What you want me to do? We don’t have a lot of options. You could always join me in the fleet.”

  “You might get in because you’re a rare ‘5A’ pilot,” she made quote signs in the air with her hands. “But I don’t have any special skills, Ethan. What I do as your copilot, a trained monkey could do.”

  “You don’t give yourself enough credit, but there’s no other option, Alara. I’m sorry.”

  Alara shook her head. “No, you’re wrong, there is another option.”

  Before Ethan realized what she meant, she’d slapped the control panel, and the inner airlock door was cycling shut.

  Ethan lunged for the narrowing gap, but airlock doors were made to open and shut quickly, and he wasn’t about to risk having an arm chopped off for his trouble. So instead he devoted himself to the control panel on the inside of the airlock, but as soon as he tried to key it open with his password, it spat out an error message and beeped angrily at him. With a dawning horror he realized his mistake. He’d thought Alara’s silence along the way had been out of sadness, but hers had been a vindictive silence, and somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, Alara had changed the ship’s entry codes. He tried waving his wrist over the identichip scanner, but the control panel sounded with another error beep.

  Ethan looked up to see Alara smiling and waving at him through the small square of transpiranium set in the top of the airlock door. He pounded on it with his fists. “Let me out!”

  She cocked her head and regarded him dubiously. “Are you sure?” she mouthed. The airlock was soundproof.

  Ethan gritted his teeth and hit the door one more time for emphasis. The dull thud of his fist echoed through the ship, and abruptly Alara seemed to make up her mind. She tapped another sequence into the airlock controls, and the outer door cycled open. Alara gestured to it meaningfully, and he scowled back at her.

  She was stealing his ship. He couldn’t believe it! It wouldn’t get her anywhere, though. Even selling it, he wouldn’t have been able to pay off the entire debt to Brondi, and he’d been willing to use the entire sum of money to pay off Alara’s half of the debt, so this really wasn’t any different to him, except that now he didn’t need to find a buyer and haggle for a decent price. He’d miss some of his personal belongings, but he didn’t have a lot of those. As a prisoner on Etaris, he’d gotten used to keeping all the important stuff with him in the old brown travel bag which was already slung over his shoulder.

  Ethan cast a quick look to the open airlock behind him and the waiting docking tube, then he turned back to Alara, pursed his lips, and nodded. If that’s the way she wants it, fine. He gave her a curt salute, and then turned and walked away.

  Chapter 4

  Ethan didn’t look back. Alara hadn’t expected him to, but if he had, he would have seen the tears running down her cheeks, and then maybe he would have understood that she wasn’t being hateful or spiteful; she was trying to save him from himself. He’d catch up with her later, after he realized what a mistake he was making, and then she’d return his ship to him, and they’d go on as they always had—

  Together.

  When Ethan disappeared from sight, Alara turned and walked back through the ship. Rather than go to the cockpit and fly off immediately, she went to the lounge and lay down on the sofa bed to quiet her racing thoughts.

  What have I done? was the first thought which ran around in circles in her brain. He’ll be back, was the second. And with that thought, she managed to calm herself enough to fall into a troubled sleep.

  * * *

  Once Ethan started down a road, he never looked back. It was looking forward he sometimes had trouble with—whether that meant moving on from his wife, Destra, or simply looking to the future with something more than abject pessimism. He hadn’t always been like that, but being sent to the mines of Etaris, ripped away from his wife and son, and being forced to face facts with a life sentence for smuggling stims, Ethan hadn’t become a big believer in hope. Then the war had come and ripped the galaxy to pieces, so pessimism seemed like a good bet.

  The fact that he still maintained some small bit of hope that he might someday run into his wife and son again was the one glimmer of optimism that proved the pessimistic rule of his life. Nobody had to sugarcoat things for him. He was used to staring cold facts in the face, and the cold fact was, his partner and only friend in the universe had just betrayed him and stolen his ship. Prior to that she’d called him a grub and said she was better off without him.

  I guess loyalty only runs so deep, he thought as he made his way around one of the many circular hubs aboard Forliss Station. By now, she’s probably halfway back to Chorlis Orbital so she can go back to hiding from Brondi. He wasn’t sure what she planned to do with his ship now that she had it all to herself, but he wasn’t sure he cared either. Out of respect for the partnership they’d once had, he hoped for her sake that she didn’t run into any collection agents on her way back. She wasn’t a half bad pilot, but not nearly good enough to shake off pursuing fighters with no shields and no copilot to man the guns. She’d be captured for sure, and knowing Brondi, he wouldn’t let her die easy.

  Well, that’s her problem. Ethan switched his focus to the task at hand. He knew that there was a fleet recruitment office somewhere aboard Forliss Station. The trick would be finding it. The station was a maze of twisting corridors, and they shot off at all angles from the circular hub where he was now walking. Each corridor had an illuminated sign above it which described the module waiting immediately on the other side, but that didn’t tell him what modules were waiting on the other side of those, and further still down the line. Ethan sighed and stopped walking in order to get his bearings. The nearest corridor branching o
ff the hub went to Yuri’s Café, the next one around the bend, to the Summer Gardens.

  Ethan turned to the nearest passerby and raised his hand to get the man’s attention. The man wore a shiny black suit—business attire—and he was walking fast. When he saw Ethan walking toward him, he sped up, but Ethan kept pace with him easily.

  “Do you know which way to the fleet’s recruitment offices?”

  The man shook his head quickly. “No, sorry.”

  Ethan frowned. “Do you know where I can find the nearest station directory to look them up?”

  “No.”

  “Hoi, you must know where I can find a directory at least. You live here, right?”

  The man turned and gave him a disparaging sneer. “Get away from me, grub.”

  Ethan grabbed the man’s arm and spun him into the nearest wall, pinning him there. “What did you call me?”

  “N-nothing.”

  “Where is the nearest directory, you little kakard?”

  The man pointed to a corridor that branched off the hub up ahead, the one whose sign read, Summer Gardens. “Through there! Now let me go! Please.”

  “All right, no need to piss your pants. I’m leaving.” Ethan gave the man a shove, causing him to stumble and almost fall, and then Ethan turned to walk toward the gardens, but he still kept half an eye on the man he’d accosted. The businessman didn’t seem like the type to be armed and dangerous, but sometimes weakness was a guise, especially if it were worn too conspicuously. Looking defenseless and being defenseless were two very different things in Dark Space, and mistaking the one for the other could make you dead.

  As the businessman hurried around the corner, Ethan finally turned his back and strode into the Summer Gardens. The corridor branching off the hub was long and narrow. There was a moving walkway going in each direction, and up ahead a strange brightness illuminated the walkway.

  The corridor soon arced out over the gardens and opened up, becoming a bridge. All around him the fresh, moist air swirled with the fragrances from a dozen different flowers in full bloom. Birds flitted over the bridge, twittering and chirping. Below and all around, the green fronds of leafy trees were reaching high into the artificial sky, which was a clear, cheerful blue overhead. Ethan sighed. If the pay were a little better, it would be worth being a parks and recreation officer just to have such a relaxing work environment. It sure beat having to breathe the canned, almost bitter air pumped out by shipboard recyclers.

  The bridge wound slowly down into the gardens below, and soon Ethan was walking through the gardens at ground-level. He could reach out and touch the leafy greenery rising all around him. He stopped to admire a gigantic blue crystal flower. The petals were thick, and from what he knew, they were actually edible. Taking a quick look around to see that nobody was watching, Ethan snapped off a petal and popped it into his mouth. The flower fruit exploded in his mouth in a burst of citric-sweet flavor that was a painful reminder of why freeze-dried rations were only for the poor grubs who couldn’t afford fresh. Nobody would willingly choose such bland garbage over this. Ethan snapped off another petal, and this time a tired mechanical voice berated him. “Please pay for your purchase.” The voice was loud, and Ethan looked around again to make sure he hadn’t drawn attention to himself. No one was watching, so he hurried off.

  Ethan shook his head. I knew it was too good to be free. He eyed the scanner bar which ran all around the cultivated gardens. It was cleverly disguised as a railing, but now that he looked at it closely, it contained the telltale red glow of a sol scanner. If he passed his wrist over it, he had no doubt it would deduct the required amount from his account.

  Ethan wound his way around the cultivated jungle, looking for an exit. Supposedly, somewhere in here there was a station directory, but he hadn’t seen one so far. The businessman had probably just lied to get rid of him.

  Come on, Ethan thought as he rounded another bend in the winding garden paths. The path he was on opened into a square with a cascading fountain in the center. The fountain was overgrown with climbing blue-flowering plants that seemed to flourish in their aquatic home. They’d wormed their roots into the synthstone, cracking it and crumbling pieces off the statue which sat atop the fountain.

  Ethan stopped to survey his surroundings. Branching off the square were four different pathways which wound through the dark, shadowy greenery of the gardens. Someone could get lost in here for hours, he thought. Perhaps that was why nobody else was walking through the gardens with him. The place was huge. Ethan turned in a slow circle, his eyes skipping around, searching for someone, anyone—an agri-worker or another pedestrian just passing through like him, but everywhere he looked there were just plants and empty synthstone paths. Suddenly he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickling, and he heard a voice call out behind him—

  “Looking for someone?”

  Ethan whirled around with his hand already on his gun to find himself face to face with the dark man he’d seen aboard Chorlis Orbital. “Hands up, Ethan.” The dark man nodded to Ethan’s side arm. “Drop that at your feet and kick it toward me. Slowly.”

  “How do you know my name?” Ethan asked nonchalantly as he slowly drew his weapon and dropped it as instructed. He purposefully ignored the last part of the dark man’s command and didn’t kick the weapon away from himself.

  The dark man shook his head. “Not relevant.”

  Ethan tried another tack. “What are you doing here?”

  A new voice joined them then. “The better question, Ethan, would be what are you doing to get me my money?”

  Ethan whirled again, unable to believe his ears. Standing behind him with a wide, toothy grin on his pudgy face was none other than Big Brainy Brondi himself. The crime boss had an annoying habit of smiling with his mouth open, like he was always on the brink of bursting into laughter. “Do you have it?”

  Ethan shook his head slowly. “No, but, hoi, Brondi, I can get it for you. I was just about to sell my ship to get you the money. Swear to the Immortals that’s what I’m here for.”

  “Not nice to lie, Ethan,” Brondi said, smoothing a hand over his head of slicked back black hair. “My man, Verlin, had a talk with a very agreeable nova pilot who was more than happy to spill his guts.” Brondi gave another gaping smile and stared at Ethan with over-wide, bloodshot gray eyes that suggested heavy stim use. “Literally and figuratively, that is. Seems like you were planning to run away and join the fleet, isn’t that right, Verlin?”

  Ethan smiled in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Look, just give me a couple more hours. I’ll sell my ship, and you’ll have your money. You can come with me, if you like.”

  Brondi raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion, and his gaping smile broadened until it looked like he was trying to swallow a giant burger whole. “Yes! Yes, that’s right. I’ll come with you. Then you can sell your ship for half the money you owe me, and I’ll kill you to make myself feel better about the other half. But wait!” He frowned and began tapping his chin. “What was the name of that ship you acquired this morning, Verlin?”

  “The Atton.”

  An icy dread slithered into Ethan’s gut.

  “Isn’t that your ship, Ethan? The one you were planning to sell?”

  “Where is she, Brondi?”

  “Where is who?” The crime boss asked with a unconvincing look of innocence etched across his fat face. “Oh, you mean your copilot! Verlin—” Ethan watched as Brondi seemed to be trying to peer over his head to get Verlin’s attention. It would have been comical were the situation not so serious, since Brondi was only about five feet tall.

  “Yes?” Verlin answered, and Ethan turned to half look at the bounty hunter.

  “I can’t recall. . . . did you have to kill the woman on board that ship, or did she surrender the vessel willingly?”

  “She fought back, but she’s alive.”

  Brondi placed a hand on his chest and staggered back, as if a great weight had suddenly been lift
ed from his boxy shoulders. “Thank the Immortals! What a relief! For a minute I thought . . . well, never mind what I thought—the important thing is that she’s alive!”

  “Release her to me, Brondi, and I’ll get you your money.”

  Brondi’s eyebrows arched sharply downward. “No, no, no, that’s not how this works, Ethan. And besides, how do you propose to get me my money if you no longer have a ship to sell?”

  Ethan gritted his teeth. “You can’t steal my ship and still pretend I owe you 10,000 sols. The ship is worth at least six.”

  “Who said anything about stealing? I said we acquired a ship, Verlin. Does that sound like stealing to you?”

  Verlin didn’t answer, but Ethan noted a return of Brondi’s gaping smile. “It’s all about the way you package things, Ethan. Why be so negative?”

  “It’s my ship, you dumb frek!”

  Brondi’s smile faded instantly and suddenly his bloodshot eyes were cold and stony. “No, Ethan. It’s my ship. Consider it the interest on your backdated loan payments. I should have you vivisected for speaking to me that way, but I’ll let it go.”