J Mauldin - Final Solution

I looked back at the empty controls of the PV array, and imagined him dancing like an idiot, humming the tune to some shit ass music he snatched off the Sol Net. Then, he’d tell me all about it, explaining how complextro and glitch fab really were different, but instead of finishing he’d get off track and tell an inappropriate joke.

“Don’t tell my sister I ever told that joke. She’ll bring Mámá back from the dead and kill me.”

A shiver ran down my spine, forcing me to swallow. I heard the voice again. I let go of the ladder and slowly turned. I checked the port hallway, searching for its source, then the starboard side. No one was nearby. I removed the forgotten earpiece and stowed it in my pocket. Was a similar signal bleeding in on its private channel? Is that what I’d heard?

“David?” the voice queried, merely a whisper on the edge of my perception. I walked from one end of the section to the other, peering around transformers and AC inverters, controls for the PV arrays, breaker panels and bundles of high voltage conduits. All was quiet but for the vibrating hum of off-phase wires as they conducted electrical currents about the ship.

“Sir? You coming?” Griffin asked, head poked through the hatch above me. Her brows were still furrowed but she didn’t seem quite as angry.

I licked my dry lips and peered down the hall one last time. I swore it was narrower. “Yeah, I’m coming,” I responded with an edge.

I wasn’t looking forward to being in a confined space with someone who hated my guts. Though nuclear storage was no less spacious than the maintenance core, at least in the core I knew open rooms were just outside its relatively thin walls. Storage was a different story. In there one is cocooned by a radioactive apocalypse in wait. Each one of these fusion warheads had the Axis’s name on it, and it was only a matter of time or opportunity before they would see their suicide mission fulfilled. It was easily my least favorite place. It reminded, all too well, of the crushing moral weight of genocide I might be paid to deliver. If thousands were to die at the Brethren’s hands, I would be as complicit as the Captain, just like I was with the Claymore .

God, let that day never come.

Halfway up the ladder the ship went red as a klaxon sounded. Griffin and I met eyes. With each ululating cry of the alarms, Griffin’s grew. I wanted to reach for the earpiece out of reflex, but held back the urge. I couldn’t let anyone know I’d been talking to Liberty. Nevertheless, I needed to know something of our status.

“I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

I took off for the bridge, though not at a dead run as I would have liked. That would draw too much attention. The hallway appeared to bend the farther I went. The earpiece vibrated in my pocket over and over, but I couldn’t put it on, not here. Dour Face was watching my every move, then there was Lank Hair talking to Doc and Higgins a little farther down. I slipped inside Crew 2 and tried again, but as soon as my fingers wrapped around it, Kelly appeared, a startled look on his face. The earpiece remained where it was. He ran a hand through his hair and gave me an uneasy smile. The old style tablet in his right hand flashed a torrent of numeric values. He removed a small flash drive shoved in its base and stowed it in a jumpsuit pocket.

The alarms screamed on, swelling louder with each wail. I swallowed my heart and felt unsteady. The bunks in our quarters were sliding closer together, leaving only enough space for a set of legs to pass between.

“They finally found us,” Kelly wheezed. “God help us.” I sidled back into the hall without a response.

Two more steps and the nurse was staring at me, an uncapped hypodermic needle in her right hand. I edged back into Crew 2, shut the hatch and dashed for the opposite hall. The air was thin. The hatches were small like port holes not doors.

Griffin hadn’t followed my instructions and was coming up behind me, deepening my concerns of having no real authority on this ship. The red lights filled our slender hallway with the many shades of war, flashing to an eye searing brightness before receding and bursting again in waves. The Reaper was near, the scales shifting. Something wasn’t right.

“David? What are you doing? Damn it! What are you doing?” I spun to see Griffin staring at me from two feet away.

“What do you mean?” I demanded, my voice harsh like a steel file drug over raw flesh. “What am I doing? Huh? What am I doing? My damned job, that’s what!”

She flinched at every word, hands raised to protect her face. “I—I—didn’t say anything, sir. I’ve been silent.”

I took a step back and went cold. It hadn’t been her voice. Not at all.

“Why would you? It’s like Harrison’s boy all over again.” The voice. But from where? My head was killing me.

I started searching the hall, running up and down its length inspecting the bulkhead beside and beneath me, sticking my head in sections to see surprised crewmembers gaping back. It wasn’t Kelly. It wasn’t Doc. It wasn’t the nurse or Lank Hair or Dour Face or Higgins. I knew the voice. I knew it well. But where the hell was he? How the hell had he gotten on board the Vindicator ? He’d wanted to take me away once, but not on this ship. I’d left him alone. Alone. Was he dead? Had he come to haunt me?

“Sir?” Griffin asked, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Are you alright? What’s wrong? Is the ship okay?”

I shrugged her off and squeezed between the monoplace hyperbaric chambers of Med 1, lowering the maintenance core’s ladder to take a look inside the spine. As I climbed the rungs I felt the earpiece vibrate more intensely against my chest. The spine of our ship was bathed in red like bone marrow, but was empty. No one was hiding in here but ghosts. There was another doodle in black marker, this one of a cross aloft a hillside, drawn beside the hatch on one of the water recyclers.

I descended the ladder and the alarms shut off. My heart was exploding in my chest, every sore muscle drumming an uncomfortable tattoo.

“Are you alright, Master Engineer?” the Nurse asked, needle still in hand. She raised it ever so slightly and clear fluid shot out the end.

I backed into the hall, hands up, nodding absently. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

But it wasn’t. I had to get the fuck out of there.

Once free I bolted down the narrow passage, seeking salvation in the arboretum, pushing aside anyone who got in my way. The walls were too close, and growing closer by the second. They were now only as wide as my shoulders and tapering down to a point. I was choking on the miasma of musty sweat and tangy bodily odors that filled the passage like a nerve gas. There was no escaping it. I was trapped in here, forced to run in circles on a hellish exercise wheel with no end.

I would never again see an expanse of sky, never again breathe sweet freedom or have a moment to myself, even in my own head. I was a prisoner, a convict, locked up with two pleading dead men, their fingers raised in constant accusation for my crimes. My soul was no longer mine, but had been left adrift in the void with no chance of rescue. I was forever lost to hope. Damned beyond salvation.

My chest pocket vibrated ever harder, as if Liberty could sense my growing urgency. I burst into the arboretum and fled for the hidden spot among the trees. I threw myself on the ground, pounding my forehead on the dirt. My body convulsed. My lips trembled. I put an ear to the ground and let it all go, cool soil turning damp. Images of César flashed in my mind. I couldn’t save him. I had needed to save a life for the one I’d taken, but I couldn’t save his. I would never set things right.

My fingers closed into tight fists, muscles aching under the strain. Blood oozed between knuckles and the dark crannies beside joints, staining my jumpsuit with great blots of crimson.