Booms the deep gravelly voice from the media screen. “Oh turn the crap off would you. I’m sick to death of hearing about that stupid fucking ship.” She says it to me from behind her console. Lt. Anise Rashida. Dressed in her baggy black jumpsuit, her maroon hair braided tightly to her scalp. The pale mocca colour of her skin looks vaguely blue in the backwash of her monitors glow. From the rolling nature of the glow I can tell that the security data she is looking through is scrolling at an incredible rate. If it weren’t for her slight modifications from a childhood injury she would never have been able to take it all in. Bionic eye implants gives her an extra external memory core so that visual data can be saved in snap shots and rendered into code directly inputted into her brain and via her visual enhancement processors. Makes for a great cop who can recall everything she has ever seen. “Babe, you know that whatever info they are releasing about the event will be heavily doctored or reframed to depict The Company in the best light possible. What a crock. I see “official” documents all day long. Some of them are from cases I worked and what gets archived or purged from the system, or even reported up the chain of command can be wildly different from the actual events on the ground.” She is non plussed by her admission. Just a matter of fact. Well, more like fiction. But to the masses still aboard the torus station, what gets passed down to them is expected to be taken as gospel. Loose lips sink ships, so they have cracked down hard on the conspiracy theorists, and anarchists alike. Quietly transporting them off station, never to be seen or heard from again. Only their closest friends and family know that their presence has been totally erased from the ship board archives. Some real Gestapo shit. But, we’re paid well, always busy, and are provided with more entertainment options than you could ever grow tired off.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that the station has become so empty over the last few years? Like shift change used to be this momentous thing, three times a day. Now you’ll be lucky to get eight people in a power lift down to the main concourse. Where has everyone gone?” I ask this question daily, and my glorious security chief wife just rolls her eyes at me and continues to work from her spot in our joint gel couch. The covers pulled down around her waist in a fluffy puddle of fabric. Although she is still wearing her coveralls she has removed all her webbing, strapping and holsters. Her cache of side arms and her baton and cuffs are securely squared away in her closet lock box. If we are ever hit with a pocket sized nuke, right in our rooms, that thing will still manage to survive unscathed. Without those bodily restrictions her coveralls look rather baggy and almost comfortable. The tough teflon weaved fabric can soak up a knife stab as well as a ballistic projectile from a small to medium sized weapon. Up to a .45 caliber bullet, but that would likely break the bones directly behind the path of the projectile. Not that the station engages in much small arms fire. We’re more likely to suffer meteorites, close calls by comets or kamikaze spaceships or crewed transports. The criminal element aboard the torus is mostly fixated on unlicensed sex and drugs. Quick and easy, simple to hide. Except when a curious case of VD sweeps through certain sections of the station. Things are drying up, now that the station is not the huge concentration of people it once was. The remaining security teams are bored, and spend most of their time on rounds checking for hull breaches or previously undiagnosed damage from the fallout of the events that surround Margot’s Fever.
“Jesus.” A loud in draw of breath from the bedroom. A gasp. Something Anise has never done before. Ever. And she was apart of the crew that had to go out and collect the masses of corpses from around the station after the accident. “What is it? What’s the matter?” In the span of a heart beat I’m up off my chair, across the adjoining room and at the foot of our bed. “I’m being transferred. To someplace listed only as UB313. Where the fuck is that? There’s no sector on this ship with that designation.” A strange look is upon her face. She must be trying to access the external visual memory to cross reference the place name. “How are you finding out about this now, at this hour?” I ask. “Oh, well you know that Lt. Dave is dealing with his daughters leukemia, and he gave me a field promotion and access to the intranet within the security force. Who boy, and I thought I knew a lot of shit before. Some of the notes, appendices and evaluations logged here are super strange. I don’t even know why we’d even have half of this stuff. Looks like I’ll get notified on Friday morning. With orders to ship out on Saturday night. Says you aren’t on the manifest to join me. Well, fuck me. How do you like that, fucking bullshit.” A mask of calm covers her face, the briefest moment of rage suppressed by years of training and personal will power. “Right. Well I’ll have to get that sorted. Don’t worry babe, I’ll not leave you behind.”
Dear god, why didn’t she just leave me behind. The cramped dark cell is wet from the damp air, and human waste. There isn’t even room to stretch out my legs, or to raise an arm. The only light visible through the bars of the dog kennel sized door is a sickly pale green. I have not seen nor heard from anyone since I boarded the security vessel on our trip out to UB313. I was directed to climb into a separate crew compartment than my wife, and the last thing I remember was falling to the ground. Like succumbing to a gas attack, or anesthesia. Then I woke up in here. I screamed myself hoarse over the course of three days. Not a soul responded to me. This cage is so tight I am unable to look at my biometrics implant in my forearm. I think I’ve been left here to die.
“Right this way Lt. Col Rashida, we have a med pod couch for you up at the front. This will be an extensive trip and your duties rigorous. We have some rejuvenation treatments set up for you aswell.” The ships captain is leading her away from me. A tug on my right elbow is the only direction I get as I’m led to a soldiers bare bones gel couch at the rear of the vessel. There are a whole slew of empty berths surrounding a huge metal canister. I’m roughly placed into my couch and the glass door shut unceremoniously. Before I can even say thanks, the room goes black. My vision immediately begins to swim as a soft hiss can be heard by the vents near the headrest. There’s no coolant gel, no sedation. This is different. I can hardly breath. What the fuck is going on here…
“Welcome back to the land of the living Lt. Col. Rashida. We have some troubling news for you. Your husband Ravindar didn’t survive the transit. The far crew compartment suffered an ammonia leak from a micro meteorite shower we were breaking through upon deceleration out near Saturn. We are so sorry for your loss ma’am.” The junior office starts to turn away from the gel couch, as the Lt. Col starts to ask a question. “Please, can I see the body. I’d like to gather his personal effects.” Rising from the couch, feeling slightly woozy from the rejuvenation treatments. “That will not be possible. Company protocol is to jettison all dead crew from the ship upon detection, so as to limit any possible exposure to decay, bacteria and airborne contamination.” With a crisp salute, he exits the med bay where the pod is located. A few members of the medical staff can be seen milling about. Death in transit has unfortunately become very common place these days. No one is safe. Before she can even think to dwell her wrist chirps with her new orders. Looks like she has about twenty weeks of intensive zero g combat training to augment her current skill sets. No time to think. Her wrist alarm is telling her she is late to meet her XO, and get debriefed. The darkness out here is pervasive and deeply oppressive. The black ops site runs dark both figuratively and quite literally.
PART XVII
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