She never looks dn.

She never looks dn.

Written by Justin Vasterling.

Inspired by the Short Story A Sea of Stars by Kayla Overkill

He had read all the logs he could find by the time he could hit her with the externals.  They were just magnetic echoes as her I systems were dark.  It was a bona fide derelict, a retirement party for the right vessel and crew, but he was not it.  9sic deposited 800k into his trade profile just to download their file and it went a long way towards him not getting any not-so-bright, bright ideas.  He was to, “board the derelict Sacrifice as an employee of Kada-IG, dark the AS Beacon, re-establish critical systems to Min-60%…” which really just meant lights and heat, something to keep the flies away, feign life if you know what I mean “...begin allswell transmitions & repel boarders as needed”.

There were four other ships enroot.  The Quiester was an OrionINC Jupiter Shuttle turned ABsalvage, they were a three man.  He had been chatting with their Intelligent Components crew, a girl, he assumed as I did from the chatter log.  They stopped talking after he posted read of the 3 files from Nine Planet’s Situation In Critical office.  Either he stopped getting “emails”, I don't know why we still call them that, when they no doubt saw his course correction, or she just grew disinterested with all his “what are you wearing now?” bullshit.  The Quiestar had been on Sacrifice’s six since 60HoursOut.  They must have been talking to the crew of the Sacrifice, or at least some of them, while some of them were still alive.  They would have been the hardest crew he would have had to repel and the first ones on him now at that time just 17HO. 

She was dark inside and out.  He made six complete rotations looking for telltales, hull breach, that’s what all the CS alarms hinted at and what he thought.  The Sacrifice had flushed 82% of its breathables in the last 13 hours before their Abandon Ship hit a blue-shifted Calisto Relay and proceeded to rain an “All Hell Is Breaking Loose” distress that no one this side of Mars new existed in code form.  Abandon fucking ship.  There must have been a real nightmare loose on that barge.

He had just picked his entry spot when he logged visual of a “body” tangled in the aft array.  It must have scarred him.  He had seen bodies before and has said he preferred them outside the ship.  It still fucks with you though, still makes you wonder what it feels like, like you could feel it, you know, hard vacuum, like they might turn to you and tell you how cold it was or that they couldn’t breath or would try to hold the air inside their blood with freezing arms.  It was a woman.  No one likes to see dead women.  He took a 3dburst of the body from one of the arms he had put on his sloop last spring then harpooned the aft hatch and went above to suit up.  The image has been sterilized with radiation but it sits in the uzby-Q as a pulse of black slides, testiment to the fact that a picture WAS taken.  He took a body bag with him. 

The body had dislodged by the time he had made it out there so he magnetized the mylar coffin and put it on the hull next to the Lock he entered.  Inside there was power and heat, the lights were just off.  He couldn’t get anything out of any of the panels in the lock so he geared back up and forced it.  In side there was no one home.  He had about 12 hours left to push this bitch back up on her feet.  That must be why he didn’t clear the ship, that’s what he must have told himself.  After checking the Changes log on his Lock he had to have assumed they had all done what they said they would do and did not check the other Lock logs.  Sacrifice had 43 when it left the Moon.  People.  Now THAT is a mining operation, hell, two of the bays were still full of those bitchin little orbiters and those babies alone were worth a retirement.  Just remote activate the little beast, paint your 8mil Ton iron Asteroid and off it goes, attaches and ferries it to a stable orbit around the nearest Brand refinery.

He was at -8% in three hours.  It was easy really; it was like he walked into some rich guy’s house, started a fire, turned on the lights, locked the door and went into the living room to watch TV only the TV didn’t work.  He got some hall to hall stuff up but not even the securities would go live.  He was on his ship when he heard it.  He was setting up his allswell and piggybacking on the Sacrifie’s IFR codes when he heard it for the first time.  There are entries, now blank like living bleach had found the stain.  He should have emailed someone.  He should have sent something but he was not that kind of guy.  He wanted at least six minutes of transition.  He wanted to send a packet out that would show a ‘receive’ a good five minutes after mission accomplished.  It was his professional salvage signature.  He never got to send it.

When the Questar arrives they wait thinking the Privateer would pull some murder shit for the haul.  It has happened, the stories are all fictions really, it’s only happened once, still, everyone thinks it.  Vacuum is no place to fight.  She sends right at visual and doesn’t stop the live call for 99 hours when all three ships go dark at once.  Her shit gets to the AMLabAe8, one of the other “Four” responders the kid mentions.  Who copies the Navies IL8 Gaspra Class Belt Hospital Ship.   The BHS IL8 rendezvous with the the AMLab and they take the next 4 full “days” getting there, arrive, then litterally disappear.

Whatever shit the kid re-awoke was swarming as the Questar started to get Gravity pings from the NISMO Drive on the Sacrifice.  I watch all seven Lstreams from the Questars last 11.8 Live seconds like it is a movie though now it sits south left of some galaxy rendered a star by distance in my hud.

The truth is, there has not even been a sea disaster like this, it’s like a cross between a fog pileup on some nowhere interstate west that stretches for a quarter mile and wrecks everything, and a marina full of glass fucking boats getting fisted by a hurricane.  The “scary” part of the transmissions is watching the crew of the Quiestar in late Technical Retro just stop forwarding AQ’s or refreshing aperatures or TC's and just sit there.  You think at first that there is a freeze in the feed but you can see horizon displacements grow or move and you realize that they are all either paralized or completely distracted.  All at the same time.  Like as in within a quarter second of eachother.

It’s not even a question about sending a nuke, each of these ships is a nuke and the Sacrifice has like a golf ball of antimatter in her NISMO drive and that could put some fucking English on the moon.  Being the only boots on the ground I wanted to feed 9sic my thoughts so they would not have to say the stupid shit outloud themselves.  The bad thing about a decision was it required knowledge of the problem and the best answer available right now, for What Is The Problem?, was still "other".  

Why the fuck is everyone jumping from their airlocks.  That’s the question right?  How are engineers spending LONG technical moments writing software patches to allow them to pop the doors to their ships with creative and calm collaboration from other crew?  What turns suicide into a trip to the club with your friends?  Those are the questions and they export into the super-psychological quickly when you consider the variance of factors and the singularity of outcome.

I get a “Stand by.” Every hour and an “Update” every six hours, I suppose they do it just so I do not think they have all shit themselves and run.  I am 11 days in Observational hold before the BC Montero is visual.  166 crew.  It’s like a space station but mean.  I dock and board and spend 11 hours getting personal with some very young people in Medical, which is all the military is any more, kids.  I wear a collar for lack of a better word.  It will “turn me off” if it needs to; just until danger is over, they tell me.  "Yeah, well, I need to be awake to make danger go away." I tell them, one of them laughs and says no shit, and then they all laugh.  They drink.  When did that change?  They are apparently going to sleepwalk into vacuum, two of the very serious types are I guess, I also guess they keep them somewhere else because every kid I have seen so far is not seriouse at all, not even a little bit.  They volunteered is what Medical says.  They would report back if they could and one of the NCO’s nod while scroll-writing into the air..  That’s what they said.

I asked them what they thought would happen.  They were all silent then one of them started screaming and grabbing her throat and cut her G-tether and everyone started laughing while she tilt whirled stiff legged until her head brushed a chair and then they all just laughed and laughed.  They were like one person.  I started drinking too.

The Captain was a girl or as the ensigns in medical called her, a Lipstick Lesbian.  Something told me they were all gay or second gender or BioSterile.  I would not find a single woman to fuck on a ship of 166, 130 of which were women of one kind or another.  She invited me to the bridge and we talked, not entirely of anything relevant to the crazy madness waiting 18KNM dead center visual in the CIC.  It was comfortable there, looked like a basement office.  There was a drawing of a bridge beside the door as you walked in, it really set the tone.  Everyone was drinking, not alcohol but something.  They were all great friends it seemed.

Then a guy rewiring some feed in the floor looked up and asked the captain, how do they all know they won’t die?  A homely girl facing away from us said telepathy but the kid doing the wiring shook his head no and smiled pointing his finger into the air.  The captain smiled.  Then six very serious looking young men came in.  One of them had his uniform painted on, no shit, you could see his dick and balls and everything and no one acknowledged it but me.  The captain stood up and ran over and hugged one of them and called him Lyle and asked him how he was feeling and he said ready and she made and indescribably encouraging, excited and cautious look that infected the entire CIC, or just me, and at that moment I would have done anything to be Lyle.

Tell Lyle that, the kid who was finishing up securing the panel told the homely girl.  She stopped, turned and looked at Lyle and then me, then turned back to the display hovering in front of her.  The captain told Lyle to come stand by her and led him by the hand back to her chair and sat, took a sip of something and looked back at the conversation that had lost some steam.  Maybe the Homely girl was straight, would want to fuck.

They ended up “Sealing” Lyle into a Clear Carbon shell with 300Hrs air and a couple power bars.  Painted it with a very unique radiation signature and fired him at the confederacy of dead ships.  Anyone within 7KNM of the egg could see it and could call it with anything larger than an EnFinity drive.  They got him back in ten days after losing two LRF’s, the Ligeia and the Siopia.  Those were two crew FA fighters, EXPENSIVE, and the pilots were fucking beautiful..  I don't know what hurts more.

“Fucking mermaids” he says nodding when they get him cut out.  I remember thinking, He shit in the egg, that’s what they were calling it, the Egg.  I remember thinking it like he had done something wrong.

The Captain just told him that Medical needed him.  He was “shut off” and fired back at the moon like a human tape recorder being mailed back with the tape still inside it for someone to play back and listen to.

They got a woman out of the deal too.  The Ligeia spotted her suited up, swimming like in water.  The suite was old school and the twin Falcata Drives on the Montero just grabbed her ping and drug her 18KNM to the gravity pillow under the ship that awaited her insane velocity.  She said the same thing.  She was the star of the ship.  She wouldn’t let Medical fix her ears.  She just kept saying that she did not want them fixed "here" and asking if whatever room she was in led outside, like outside to the yard or whatever, thats how she said it.  "Can you get outside from here?"  She was hot of course.  Mean.  Strong.  I got a kiss and a boot in my balls becaause of it.  Shit, I should name this; a Kiss and a Boot in the Balls for trying.  Fuckin mermaids, and nothing from anybody like, she's crazy or, sedate her, or any looks of incredulity it was just, Mermaids, really, no shit.

I was EB so I took her; she was keen to forgive everything for a ride FastBack.  We talked a little.  I asked her why everyone in this fucking solar system was gay these days and she looked at me like I just told her that her favorite band just sounded like noise.  Whatever.  I never saw a Mermaid.  Never went back to the Scene of the Suicides.  It’s a big belt.  There’s no reason to go back there and I won’t no matter how many times they ask.  You see, the BC Montero came back empty.  The whole goddamn ship’s crew just walked into space.  I found out weeks later.  The truth is I follow her, the girl they found.  I watch her from the street in the rain, watch her through her window, got an apartment across the alley, our windows almost touch, Old earth is the real deal.  I listen to her scream in the night, sit up in the window like I am protecting her somehow by being awake but I am not.  I am just watching, listening.  She never looks up.