Echoes of Starlight Page 4

  “Marti’s skinsuit doesn’t have a sense of smell, but I do,” he said, rolling his eyes in a good impression of a person about to lose containment of their last meal. “It’s hot in there and that’s not a pleasant experience.”

  “Did you see a body?”

  “No. I couldn’t push through it,” Rene said.

  “Got it,” the captain said. Taking a deep breath, he rolled back to a standing position and nodded. “You wait here, and I’ll go check it out.”

  “You don’t want to do that,” the engineer said. “Seriously.”

  “You’re right I don’t, but we have to know what’s going on here,” he said.

  “We can wait for Marti to get back,” the engineer said. “No sense of smell would be a blessing.”

  “When it gets back we’re leaving,” he said. “I’ll just make a quick run in and see. I can hold my breath for a minute at least.”

  “You really don’t want to do that,” Rene said. “It could be something contagious.”

  “If it is, we’ve already been exposed,” Ethan said. Looking around, he started toward the house.

  He’d covered about half the distance to the back door when the wall of reek slammed him in the face and he thought about turning back. It was definitely rotting flesh.

  Gulping in a deep breath and swallowing hard, he launched himself through the door, and into what looked like a galley. It was clean and dark. And sweltering hot. Painfully, oppressively, hot.

  Across the room, he could see another doorway and he pushed toward it. Pulling out his handbeam, he switched it on. His eyes were burning and he wanted to gasp, but he knew that if he did, he’d be doomed.

  Rounding a corner and driving himself deeper into a narrow hallway, he tried to figure out where he should go. There were several doors to the sides and a bigger area straight ahead. Where would a person go to die? Alone, or with the whole family?

  He opted for the big room and as soon as he entered it, he saw the source of the smell.

  The dining table.

  Sitting in the middle of the table was what had probably been a family dinner. Protein slabs and yeastcakes and some kind of rich brown stuff. Maybe it had been gravy once.

  It was not a dead body. It was dinner. A week or more ago.

  He let out a sigh of relief and then realized his mistake. It meant he had to breathe in.

  Spinning around, he raced back in the direction he’d come, retracing his steps double fast, until he burst out into the air. Gulping down a deep lungful of scalding hot air, he knew instantly that he was still too close to the door. The smell at this range was a vile taste, and he fought to not topple over and retch. Stumbling across the yard toward the tree, he crashed down, gasping. Rene grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him the rest of the way into the shadow.

  “Holy mother of Fred, you stink,” he said. “Frag I hope you didn’t get any on me. Please tell me it isn’t contagious.”

  “It isn’t,” Walker said. “I think it was meatloaf.”

  “Meatloaf?”

  “Yah. No dead bodies,” he said, chuffing out his breath and almost laughing. He rolled over onto his back and nodded. The ground was hot, but an odd cool breeze had kicked up and it felt refreshingly not hellish. “It was rotting food.”

  “Ah, the refrigeration was out in the galley.” The engineer nodded. “That makes sense. A cold locker with a bad door—”

  “No, it was dinner sitting on a table and dished up on plates,” the captain said. “Some of it might have been half-eaten already, but I didn’t want to stick around and check.”

  “Eaten by what?”

  “By the family that lived here. It looks like they sat their eating tools down and vanished.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t even look like they left in a particular rush. Everything seemed to be in place.”

  “People don’t just disappear,” Rene said.

  “You want to go in and look for yourself?” he challenged.

  “No.”

  “Then I recommend you lay back and enjoy the show.” He pointed up just as the sun winked out and the stars spread across the sky in a wave.

  To someone that worked on a starship the view wasn’t spectacular, but for some unexplained reason, the darkness had a sinister edge that made him shiver in a most decidedly bone-chilling way.

  Fortunately, Marti was due back in a few minutes and then they could get back to the ship.

  Chapter Five:

  When the shuttle docked, Kaycee, Leigh, and Elias had all crowded into the hangar deck’s small observation room. The ship’s two cargo handlers also hung back to both sides of the lift cage. Ostensibly they were here to lend a hand, but the truth is they were standing by to keep the two passengers from going hyperbolic and starting a problem.

  On paper Billiam Chandler and Angelique Wolfe had signed on to the Olympus Dawn to process and load cargo although with the recent upsurge in deep space piracy Cochran Space had cross trained all their handlers in security ops. That meant they were on board to deal with trouble more than to wrestle crates. They both looked the part of hired muscle even when they were trying to be unobtrusive.

  Preston stood propped between Rene and Ethan, when they emerged through the shuttle airlock and Kaycee reached out to take his arm. “Let me get him on ice in the MedBay first and then we can go over what you found out.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” the captain said, nodding to Wolfe to come and get him. “We can take care of him, and you’re a passenger.”

  “I’m a doctor first,” she said, fixing him with an expression that left little doubt that she didn’t intend to argue over propriety.

  Leigh protested. “But you might be—”

  Kaycee spun so fast toward her that the Triple-C took a step back. The air around her froze, and she nodded meekly. Rene snickered, and the captain fixed him with a laser eyeball of his own. It wasn’t often that someone could put Leigh in her place, especially without a word.

  “Like I said, Elias and I will get his hyperthermic stress stabilized, and then we’ll come talk to you,” Kaycee said, turning back to the captain and shooting him a conspiratorial wink.

  “I think I’ll be alright,” Preston said.

  “Probably, but let’s make sure,” she said as the two of them led him toward the lift. The handlers both squeezed in behind them.

  “Did Nuko order that?”

  “She suggested that Mr. Pruitt could be a handful if he became agitated, and that it might be prudent to have them provide an escort any time they were in the command sections of the ship,” Marti said.

  “Has he given anyone a problem?”

  “Me,” Leigh said.

  “I think he meant people so you don’t count,” Rene said, slapping his hand over his mouth and jumping behind the captain. “Oops, sorry.”

  “Why don’t you go deal with machinery or something,” she said, firing off a melodramatic glare in his direction. Rene was the only one on the ship that seemed to have a real friendship with her even if it was a bit odd at times.

  “That’s a good idea,” Ethan said. “See if you can help Marti repair the damaged arm on its skinsuit. We might need to go back down there and I’d like it to be back in spec if we do.”

  “You both need to shower,” she said, wrinkling up her nose. “But first Ethan, if I may have a word with you? In my office?”

  “You’re in trouble now,” Rene said as he swung around and ducked back into the shuttle to grab his toolkit and the arm section he’d removed from Marti’s automech.

  “First, I need to file a report to FleetCom,” he said. “If you want to follow me to my wardroom, we can talk once I am done with that.”

  “I’ll give you a few minutes to take care of that, and maybe to scrape off some of the reek, and then I’ll be there,” she said. “I think perhaps I need to refresh your memory on what you can, and cannot, do as a lease carrier for CSL. Your obligation is to the cargo first, and that needs to dire
ct your actions from here forward.”

  She pivoted as the lift returned to the deck, leaving him staring after her and chewing on his lip.

  “You can’t let her get to you,” Rene said, returning with his toolkit. “She’s doing her job, and honestly she’s not as bad as some I’ve crewed with in the past.”

  “I know you’re right.” The captain nodded, letting out a long slow breath. “Go shower man, you stink.”

  “You should talk. I’m not the one that charged into the fog of eternal stench. You smell like dead things.”

  “It was frakking meatloaf!” he said as he grabbed the next lift run and headed up to the crewdeck and his quarters.

  The shower helped a lot, both in removing the malodorous layer of sweat and grime, and in giving him time to sort his thoughts. He still had no idea what was going on down on the surface, but he knew it wasn’t something that would work itself out without more information. Unfortunately, it also wasn’t a situation he had the tools to deal with. He realized that much, even without answering the hundred questions that were chewing on him.

  “Marti, where’s the nearest FleetCom center?” he asked as he dropped into his seat and drummed his fingers on the edge of his console.

  “Cygnus Deep-Three is 15.9 parsecs. Transmission time one way is thirteen hours and fifty-five minutes.”

  “Spin up the comm,” he said, watching the display as the FTL transmitter powered up. When the icon blinked ready, he cleared his throat and tapped the screen to record his message.

  “Cygnus Deep-Three, this is Ethan Walker, Captain M-9–2710-HCO of the CSV-1070 Lease Transport Olympus Dawn. Our current position is Kepler 186e Starlight, Cygnus.

  “Please be advised that we arrived at Starlight Colony and need to report an unknown incident has occurred on the surface. It appears the colony may have suffered some form of catastrophic event. When we arrived, we were unable to make contact with automated approach systems, and discovered the colony itself is experiencing an ongoing systemic failure of its infrastructure. Within the limitations of our sensor capabilities, we can detect no signs of activity anywhere in the K-186 system.

  “We have undertaken a limited excursion to the surface. While on the surface we did not make contact with anyone, nor did we find any evidence of mass casualties. Prior to returning to the ship we observed standard bio-hazard protocols and have detected no contamination from our limited exposure.

  “Passengers aboard the Olympus Dawn are concerned that any response to this situation may be time critical, as the colony is fundamentally dependent upon technological support for basic survival.

  “We will maintain position at the Starlight Colony transfer beacon and await release, or further instruction.

  “Walker, Commander Olympus Dawn. Out.”

  He tapped the icon again to review the transcript of the message and nodded. “Formal enough sounding I guess,” he said out loud. “Attach what we know so far and send it.”

  “Message away,” the AA said. “Leigh Salazar is approaching your office.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, sighing as he closed the comm and waited for her to rap on his door. She came in and sat down.

  “I know officially you’ve got to do this, but can we just keep it in perspective please?” he said. He was in no mood for her bureaucratic finger wagging in spite of the fact that she had the right, and obligation, to pull him up short when he got out of line. The company line anyway.

  “Perspective is an interesting choice of word Ethan,” she said. She only used his first name when she was about to lecture him on his miniscule place in the universe. She was younger than he was, but she reminded him of his mother when she started out with his name. “From my perspective you’ve put the cargo in jeopardy.”

  Normally she wasn’t difficult to deal with, but he could tell she thought he’d done something monumentally stupid. Her job was to protect the passengers and cargo in a legal sense, and anytime anything unexpected came up, she had to do her best to mitigate the risk side of the situation. The unknown that they’d encountered had to represent an uncontrollable variable in her mind.

  “I know my job and I’m good at it,” he said. “I’ve got the best performance record in the CSL lease fleet. I’ve never lost a load for failing to deliver and you know that.”

  “Yes I do.” She nodded. “Unfortunately that doesn’t change the facts. You took unnecessary chances with the cargo and your passengers by going down there to investigate. The Olympus Dawn may be a slick new rig, but you aren’t mastering a multicruiser. You don’t have a staff of scientists to figure things out. You don’t even have a real ship doctor. How do you know you aren’t stepping into something dangerous?”

  “Why do you think I am?” he challenged. “Without looking around, we don’t have any way to even guess.” It was a weak defense for his actions and he knew it, but she had made him feel like he had to push back.

  “You’re right. There isn’t any way to know.” She leaned forward and put her elbows on the arms of her chair and laced her fingers in front of her chin. “You’re not qualified to guess, but that’s exactly why you can’t afford to do that. What if the reason you’re not getting a reply is because they all ended up with something contagious? It could be something deadly, like the disease that killed Burroughs.”

  “You’re being alarmist. There are no bodies down there,” he said. But Preston and Rene had picked up on that same feeling too.

  “You mean there are no bodies you’ve found, so far,” she said. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t piles of dead packed away somewhere.”

  “There’s nothing down there.”

  “Did you look in a hospital?” she challenged. “Did you make it that far?”

  “No,” he said. “Preston went down before we did.”

  “That’s probably a good thing,” she snapped. “The sickest place on a planet is the hospital. If you’d gotten that far and it was a virus, you’d damned sure have brought it here. We’d all be infected right now.” She shook her head. “For that matter, we might already be, and just not know it yet.”

  “We ran a med sweep in the shuttle before we came back to the ship,” he said. “It’s part of why we took so long getting up from the surface.”

  “So maybe you got lucky this time,” she said. “But there’s no way you can say your actions were protecting the cargo. Or the passengers. Right now you’ve got a crew member in MedBay being tended to by a paying passenger.”

  She paused and shook her head. “That’s a whole extra glueball right there. The company will have to figure out how to compensate her for taking care of staff personnel who were injured on duty. You risked your crew, and everything else, just to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “It wasn’t about curiosity,” he lied. “I’m trying to make a delivery. I can’t do that if I don’t locate someone to take custody of the shipment. Going down there might have been the only way to have solved that problem.

  “That’s a thin excuse and you know it,” she said, calling him on it with a frown.

  “It’s not an excuse, it’s the truth.” He held his hand up to cut off another volley. “The point is, I’ve had to bring FleetCom in on this now. I don’t know what’s going on down there, but it does require that I alert the authorities.” He stood up, hoping it would give her the idea that the conversation was over. She didn’t move.

  “I’ve reported this to Deep-Three, and once they decide what to do with it, we can go from there,” he said, walking toward the door. “At the least they’ll give you the legal release paperwork so we can get the cargo back to its point of origin.”

  “That will involve penalties,” she said, rising from the chair and turning to face him. “And I am going to have to file a report with CSL Shipping Control. You have a seriously injured crewman and that will require some accountability.”

  “For frak sake, he got overheated,” he said.

  “Dr. Caldwell says hyperthermia can be li
fe threatening. She explained that it kills a lot of people on an annual basis on Starlight. Do not try to play this off as trivial, Captain. It isn’t,” she said, lowering her voice and squaring her shoulders. He could tell she was expecting to fight him over this.

  “That may be true, but right now it doesn’t matter what you do,” he said, opening the door and nodding out toward the corridor. She still didn’t move. “We are required by law to remain here until authorities release us.”

  “That only applies to a site of criminal activity. Nothing says this is a crime, and even if it is, then most certainly remaining here jeopardizes the security of the ship, the cargo and the crew,” she said. “I am ready to cancel the contracts so we can return to Zone One now. Dr. Caldwell and Mr. Pruitt can make other arrangements after we return them to safety.”

  “They’re not going to sit still for that,” he said, almost laughing at her preposterous suggestion.

  “It doesn’t matter if they sit still, or dance a jig.” She stepped up close enough he could feel her breath on his face. “If I cancel the contract, you will be obligated to return the ship and its cargo to Zone One immediately.”

  “You can do that, but I will not break the law to protect company policy, or your precious contract. Without a release from the authorities, we’re going nowhere. I’ve contacted FleetCom and as soon as we know what they want us to do, we can be on our way,” he said. “So why don’t you take a deep breath and get off my ass while we wait? I’ve got a ship to run and you have paperwork to file or something.”

  He pointed through the door and nodded. “We’re done.”

  “You’ve got a problem with your attitude, Captain,” she said as she stepped past him into the hall. “That will go in my report.”

  He shoved the door closed behind her and sighed. “And I don’t think I care.”

  It would be a minimum of six days for her report to get to Zone One. If he got a comm back from Deep-Three, he’d have an answer, and probably the release, before her message got to headquarters.

  Chapter Six: