Days Until Home

by Mark Gardner

  She stepped around Viktor and sauntered down the passageway, her hips swayed with each step. She refused to look back. Doing so would be as if they were more than just obstacles in her way.

  It didn’t take Adelaide long to find the instrumentation space where Erika waited. Erika’s behavior has been erratic lately, Adelaide thought. She paused at the door and touched the copper mesh beneath her coveralls.

  “Ten minutes to departure. No exceptions. Anyone who breaks a limb because they weren’t in their launch chairs will be required to reimburse the Kerwood for medical expenses.”

  She frowned at Captain Hayes’ announcement. Instrumentation spaces have spare launch suits, she told herself as she punched in a code that only she and Erika knew and stepped through the door.

  Days Until Home: 41

  Time Until Launch: 00:28:01

  Jeremy cocked his head and listened to the announcement over the 1MC.

  “Attention, all crew. This is Captain Hayes. Departure time has been moved up. Anyone not in their launch chairs in twenty-eight minutes will find themselves bouncing around like a human pinball.”

  “Pinball?” Jeremy scoffed. “I could strap myself to the outside of the hull for this launch and get some practice in on my ukulele.”

  Adelaide’s face froze. “My dad had a ukulele,” she murmured.

  Something rolled behind her eyes but, with as much time as they spent working together, Jeremy hadn’t been able to crack the emotional armor she always wore. He only knew she had suffered a great tragedy when she was very young, but contract after contract, she never told him the story of her sordid past. Not that he really needed to know. As long as she did her job, she was okay in his book.

  But, his mind interjected, what about the odd circumstances of her promotion?

  He shook his head and returned his attention to the repair job they had completed on the aft xenon storage tank. He pulled off his work glove and ran his finger along the epoxy; its rough texture caught on his calloused digits. He reached for material to grind down the edge of the tank, and his head swam for a moment.

  “Watch out, ChEng,” Adelaide said and grabbed his elbow. “We cranked the atmo and O2 levels up in here to keep from losing any more xenon.”

  When Jeremy had regained his equilibrium, Adelaide released his elbow and asked, “Why’re we doing this repair anyway?” She glanced to the epoxy. “We hardly need the two ranking engineers of the Kerwood to fix a little scratch on Ol’ Betsy here.” She rubbed her gloved hand on the cold metal of the storage tank. “Hell, ChEng, we almost never use this tank. The forward tank is good for what, seven AU?”

  He smiled. “On paper, she’s good for seven point something, but I know this tub can do ten if it’s planned correctly.”

  “One way trip to Titan?”

  Jeremy nodded. “Not sure what you’d do once you got there, but aye, it could be done.” He was unable to decipher the look on her face. If he had to classify it, it would be longing.

  He pointed at the roll of copper mesh in the tool bag, and Adelaide retrieved it and handed it to him. “You didn’t answer my question,” she declared as she relinquished the copper mesh.

  Jeremy rubbed the copper against the epoxy. Little chunks of silicate shaved off the patch job and tumbled to the deck in the increased gravity of the space. He was silent as he smoothed it down and, even after he was satisfied the job was complete, he continued to stare silently at the aft storage tank.

  “Jeremy?” Adel asked as she placed her hand on his shoulder.

  Slag, she’s tall, he thought, and beautiful. He turned to his MPA. “I believe we have a saboteur on board.”

  “An engineer?” she asked, her fingers touching her lips. She scowled at the taste of her work gloves and clasped her hands behind her back.

  “Not sure,” he declared. “It’s just…we’ve got a crack in a storage tank we never use but service all the time. We’ve got some sort of kerfuffle about the food stores. I keep getting reports about ambient microwave emissions, but nothing on this tub should be putting out anything on that freq.” He sighed and stretched his back, his hands finding familiar pains along his spine. “I’m too old for this.”

  Adelaide nodded. “Yeah, for this,” she waved at the repair. “You should be holed up in main engineering, snoring and dreaming about whatever salty old codgers like you dream about.”

  His first instinct was to make a quip about dreaming of young beautiful main propulsion assistants but, alas, such a notion was inappropriate. He was about to retort something, but a chirp from Adelaide’s pocket interrupted him.

  “Excuse me, ChEng,” she said and stepped away from the awkward moment that only lived in his mind. He crouched to retrieve all the tools they had scattered around the space for the repair.

  I need off this barge, he thought, so I don’t need to worry about saboteurs. Maybe I can convince Crazy Ade to find something else to do with her life.

  Days Until Home: 42

  Erika allowed the light gravity of Egeria-13 to allow her to float into the escape trunk. She swung the dorsal hatch closed and watched the panel next to it cycle from red to yellow, and then to green. She tore away the flap that covered the diagnostic cluster on her left forearm. The mining suits were pretty rugged, and she preferred the mining gear when she was performing thruster maintenance. There was something about the thin insulated material of the standard EVA suit she didn’t trust. So, the mining suit it was. She always increased the suit pressure because they were notorious for having micro fractures in the Lexan helmets.

  She was working the overnight shift when word came down that Captain Hayes wanted off Egeria-13 as soon as possible. She giggled at the mental picture of Hayes as a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff. Adelaide only brought up the similarity between Hayes and the childhood icon once, but it had stayed with her.

  She verified atmosphere on her forearm cluster, and when the readings on her suit matched the panel inset to the hatch, she pressed a panel on the opposite bulkhead. The inner hatch started its sequence of moving atmosphere from one space to the other. The procedure seemed to take forever. She wanted to be rid of the stuffy suit, but her careful manner mandated she have at least one space between her and the black before she relied on the Kerwood’s life support system.

  Her careful, and almost paranoid, attention to detail had saved her more than once. She knew firsthand that dangers lurked not only in the black but also behind steel and plastic. An icon flashed on her heads-up display. She frowned. Her O2 was dangerously low. I should have more than two hours of O2 left, she silently mused. She waved her forearm across the sensor on the other side of the inner door, and the information displayed on the small screen on her forearm was duplicated on the larger screen.

  “Huh,” she mumbled.

  “Say again, EVA-1, I didn’t catch that last transmission.”

  “Wait one, Engineering,” she replied, “I’ve got some odd readings on my environmental.”

  “Positioning shows you in gangway three inside the yellow zone. Confirm?”

  “Negative, Engineering. I’m at inner door seventeen three four delta. Why does the positioning always turn to slag between the EXTs?”

  “Gremlins,” the disembodied voice in her ear intoned.

  Erika giggled at the bad joke.

  Once the inner door cycled through, and its indicator shone green, Erika screwed the collar of her EVA suit and released the helmet with an audible hiss.

  She chuckled again at the joke. She walked down the passageway with her helmet under her left arm, laughing at the offhand comment that just wouldn’t seem to die. She decided to go from the change room to the galley to blow her additional credits on rations from the Kerwood’s black market.

  She chuckled again. A black market in the black of space. Her musing was even funnier than the line about the gremlin. Who was it that said that? she pondered, a light feeling decreed she could do anything. Well, anything but try to figure
out who was monitoring her EVA. I can’t remember who was on duty in engineering, she thought with a snort.

  It just didn’t matter to new Erika. Old Erika was… Careful Erika. Boring Erika. The only other person on this carnival of souls that appreciated the old Erika was the main propulsion assistant. Crazy Ade, she thought. Adelaide was as unpredictable and passionate as Erika was calm and careful. They seemed to complement each other perfectly.

  Erika stared at her suited forearm, trying to figure out how to see her chronometer. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she forced her right hand to peel back the flap. Once she finally deciphered the digital display, she thought, Adelaide is already on duty now. I’ll need to show her the new and improved Erika Ängström. What can two wild and crazy girls get into before this crate steps off this rock?

  She smirked at her newfound mirth, and what she had in store for her impending liaison with Adelaide.

  But first, time for a healthy breakfast!

  She let loose a laugh so hard that her entire body shook. She had to stem the giggles long enough to perform the arduous process of removing her suit. And…she needed to report something to somebody. What was it she needed to check?

  No matter, she thought, I’ll worry about it after I see Adelaide.

  Erika walked toward the galley, her new swagger constantly causing her shoulder to bump into the bulkhead. Each impact elicited another giggle.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Days Until Home: UNKNOWN

  The taste of the stale calorie bar still lingered in Viktor Sharapov’s mouth when the ship began to tremble.

  His eyes shot open.

  “Whoo boy,” Jimmy said. He was two seats down, and his voice sounded muffled. “Now it’s a party.”

  Viktor realized why his voice sounded strange: it didn’t come from the receiver in his helmet because Jimmy wasn’t wearing one.

  It sat in his lap, quiet and unused.

  The trembling grew stronger, wobbling Viktor’s seat.

  “Jimmy!” Viktor yelled. “Put your helmet on!”

  The kid picked up his helmet, but not to put it on. He held it to his ear to use the comms, like a sphere-shaped telephone. “What’s that, Vicky?”

  “Put your slagging helmet on!” Viktor looked around the launch hallway at the handful of other miners who hadn’t bothered to follow protocol. The vibration in his bones increased.

  “All of you. Do as I say. Connor! Do you not feel this?”

  The ops manager twisted in his seat. “Relax. The ship isn’t exactly new. Always some bumps. If the engineering team signed off on the launch—”

  A sudden jolt threw everyone’s heads forward.

  The room spun. Everything was wrong. For a brief, horrific moment, Viktor was certain his head had been sliced off and was now tumbling across the room independent of his body.

  But it wasn’t just his head. The entire seat had become dislodged from its base, sending him in a slow arc through the air, tugged by the minuscule gravity created by the Kerwood’s thrust. Viktor bounced off the far wall gently. Two screws and a hexagon nut from the seat mounting hit the wall within his view.

  Cheering echoed in his helmet and in the muffled air on the other side of his visor. He looked around the hallway as his seat rotated back into view.

  The entire mining crew was whooping and whistling, clapping their gloved hands together. Only Jessica didn’t join in the cheer. She leaned back in her chair defeated.

  “I do not understand,” Viktor muttered to nobody in particular.

  “Of course you’d be the one,” Jimmy said. “Luckiest Russian that ever lived.”

  “Lucky?”

  “The fun seat,” Jimmy said as if that were explanation enough. When it became clear it was not, he added, “We’ve been taking bets on when it’d finally go. I put a week’s pay down that it would happen on launch. Jessica took the bet.”

  Jimmy reached across another miner to playfully shove Jessica. She blew a puff of air that tossed a blonde lock inside her helmet.

  “Another wager.” Viktor was up near the ceiling, bouncing between two walls. He fumbled with the straps of his harness. He tried to make his voice as scolding as possible. “This is unacceptable. Connor, when we get home—”

  Jessica leaned forward. “Oh, lighten up, Vicky. I’m the one who should be mad that—”

  Her head disappeared as the bulkhead exploded.

  Pure light blinded everything.

  Viktor flew backwards into open air, then struck something. Hard. Even with the chair strapped to his body, the force knocked the wind from his lungs. Light danced across his vision like shooting stars. Something rang in his ears, foreign and cloudy.

  Then the screams began.

  He heard them twice, on the radio in his ear and muffled outside his suit. Surround sound panic. Something was wrong with the launch hallway, but no matter how much he blinked he couldn’t get his vision to focus.

  For the next ten seconds, it took all of Viktor’s willpower just to coax air back into his lungs.

  Everything came together as he began breathing. Sound became more distinct: a woman screaming, a man praying. A third voice calm and orderly, which was somehow more horrifying than the rest.

  Slowly, the blinding light left Viktor’s eyes. He saw the inside of his helmet, but the glass was clouded along a lightning-shaped crack down the front. He could only make out bits of grey wall outside. Soon, that faded as the cloudy condensation spread.

  “What has happened?” he asked his helmet, hollow and helpless.

  Nobody responded. The woman screamed louder.

  But of course, Viktor knew what was wrong. The pressure within his suit and without were equal at launch. A crack shouldn’t have created a rush of equalizing pressure.

  Unless the ship, or more specifically the launch hallway, was losing atmosphere.

  His helmet’s heads-up display confirmed it a moment later. The letters were harsh and red:

  EXTERNAL PRESSURE ANOMALY

  SUIT INTEGRITY COMPROMISED

  INTERNAL PRESSURE INCREASED TO COMPENSATE

  Viktor allowed himself a moment of panic. I’m going to die. I’m already dead. My grave will be the black, and Helena will never have a headstone to place her flowers.

  Then the moment was gone.

  He tuned out the sounds coming over the radio and focused on his immediate problem. The helmet, yes. But beyond that, he still bounced around in his chair, striking the walls. The chair had far more mass than he did. He needed to get out of his harness to get control of his tumbling.

  He felt around for the straps. They made an X shape across his chest, but the gloved layer between his fingers made touch-feeling difficult. He wished he could see. His seat struck a wall, knocking Viktor’s skull against the inside of the helmet. One of the red warning messages disappeared. It came back a moment later with two new ones. One of them was a number, a percentage, rapidly decreasing. He ignored it. The crack in his helmet hissed.

  Focus, he told himself. One brink-of-death problem at a time.

  His gloved fingers found the seam of the strap, raised slightly above his launch suit. He followed the strap until it reached the buckle connecting to the top of the harness, metal and rigid.

  Good.

  Viktor gripped the buckle between his thumb and index finger and squeezed. It did not eject the way it was supposed to.

  Not good.

  Of course, the harnesses were made to engage the strap locks when a crash occurred. To prevent the very scenario Viktor encountered: someone bouncing around the ship uncontrollably.

  Fun seat indeed.

  He slammed into something softer than a metal wall, and the morbid part of Viktor’s mind knew it must be a body. He’d struck it hard. He said a quick prayer that the person was already dead, and then felt shame for wishing such a terrible thing.

  He ran through his launch training, like watching an old home movie. All launch suits had a utility pocket down by the th
igh with emergency supplies. His hand found it by touch, felt the bulky contents pressing against his thigh. The velcro came open, and he grabbed the first thing he touched.

  He held it up to the sliver of helmet that wasn’t fogged. It was a five centimeter knife, folded in half to protect the blade.

  Yes!

  Viktor used both hands to unfold it, then fumbled at his harness. Eventually he got his fingers under a strap and stuck the knife underneath. Pointing the blade away from his body, he sawed at the fiber, praying it was made of cheap material like everything else on this cursed deathtrap of a ship.

  He sawed, and floated, and tensed as he bounced against a wall. Then he sawed some more. The hissing in his helmet sounded farther away. His ears popped. He could feel the strap coming apart, the tension shifting to the remaining threads.

  The knife broke through the final piece with sudden ease.

  Viktor tried to squirm his way through the harness, but it wasn’t enough. He’d need to cut another.

  He began on the second strap more fervently. His suit politely declared that his heart rate was elevated, his breathing erratic. He wished the voice were a person, and not a computer, so he could curse at them in Russian.

  He cursed at them anyway, if only to hear his own voice.

  The knife was halfway through the second strap when he bounced against a bulkhead. His elbow extended because of the sawing motion, took the brunt of the force.

  Which is how Viktor stabbed himself.

  The rush of air across his belly masked the pain, a strange sensation like having someone purse their lips and blow across the skin. Then he moved his arm, and with it the blade, and fire ran across his gut like water. He wasn’t sure what he should do, but instinct made him pull out the blade in one quick motion. A drop of blood hit his helmet, faintly red behind the fogging air.

  Viktor ignored the dozen new warnings in his suit. Already, he was dizzy with each turn of his head.