Hugh Howey - Bounty

They say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming. They don’t stop. They’ll never stop. It’s just too depressing to keep counting, so we start over after the third bad thing. We hold our breath. We wait. We hope the universe will wait with us.

But then something else bad happens, and with dread and short memories we utter to ourselves, “Okay, that’s one,” and we brace for what’s next.

Something’s always next.

I live in a tin can on the edge of sector eight, and my job is to keep bad things from happening. My track record so far is less than stellar. A screensaver on one of my monitors reads 18 Days Since Our Last Accident . It ticks up by one each morning, so that’s progress.

Most ships pass through my sector at twenty times the speed of light, and they leave little more than a ripple on my grav scanner. But near on three weeks ago, some bastards took down my beacon, and a cargo bound for Vega splashed itself across the asteroid field in my back yard. Most of the wreck is still out there—what the pirates and scavengers and souvenir seekers didn’t cart off.

I guess if we’re counting, that was the first bad thing. The second was a little incident I’d rather not mention, but it involved a talking rock. Okay, it involved me talking to a rock—I’m pretty sure the rock never talked back. Just in case, I drilled a hole straight through the guy and hung him around my neck on a lanyard. Not sure if I did this to make sure the rock was really dead or to keep him close to my ears in case he talks again. Told you I wasn’t proud.

The third thing is the reason my body is covered in bruises, cuts, and scrapes right now. It’s why my ankle is either sprained or broken and my arm is in a sling. Two days ago, my grav panels started oscillating uncontrollably. Really turns a man’s world upside down. And right-side up again. And upside down. And—well, you get the point.

Now I’m a mess and my beacon’s a mess. Tools, food packs, spares, all went rattling around in their cubbies and cabinets until they burst forth like possessed demons. Hundreds of items are scattered all over the place, choosing to lie perfectly still now, like they’re all exhausted from the pounding they gave me. Taking naps. Waiting for me to tuck them all back in.

Before I do that, I’m wiring up kill switches for the grav generator. I put big red buttons on the ceilings of every living module and ran wires to breakers down in life support. Can’t step on the buttons by accident, but if my tin can gives me the old shake-and-bake again, I can hit one of these instead of trying to get down a ladder while gravity is rag-dolling me. Trying to get down the ladder the last time is what took my arm out of its socket.

I could probably call the incident in and list my wounds, and it’d be enough for NASA to send me home. Problem is, I don’t have a home to go to. Some part of me knows I’m here for life. And the way things are going, I reckon that won’t be for very long.

I finish the last wire splice on the new kill switches. Even with the floor grates up for access, I have to wiggle back under some of the pipes and conduits to reach the grav generator. Wrapping electrical tape around the splice, I laugh to see the same tape wrapped around one of my fingers. I ran out of bandages, so I resorted to taping up my cuts. The same stuff holds us together, me and my beacon. Hell, most of this place is a modification some previous operator made. It’s like a human body at age thirty-five, when not a single original cell is left. All that remains are the memories—the one damn thing we wish we could amputate.

Funny how that works. And funny how easily we forget the good times while the nightmares haunt us. Guess that’s a survival mechanism. We’re not here to be happy; we’re just here to be here. I spend a lot of time wishing I wasn’t—but that’s my dark secret, and not something I’m going to tell you. I don’t even whisper that to my rock.

Three bad things. They come like this, in little clusters for the counting. They’re coming for me now.

Ding-Dong.

The first of them arrives with the sound of a door chime.

Okay, it’s not quite a door chime; it’s actually a hull proximity alert. But if you ask me, the old alert sounded too much like an air raid siren. Which ain’t so bad when it’s occasional, but with all the traffic after the cargo crash, it started jangling my nerves. It’s the waiting for it to go off that kills me. It’s the silent anticipation. Your whole body is tense, lying awake in your sleep sack, eyes wide open, seeing a buddy yell INCOMING! before a cloud of red mist blooms where a human once stood. Yeah, it’s not the sound of the siren that gets you. It’s the lying there, waiting. Listening to the silence. Counting.

I did some digging, figured out where the sound file for the alert was stored, and replaced it with a door chime. Of course, I couldn’t find a door chime in the archives, so I had to record my own. And yeah, I could’ve made a decent chiming sound with a wrench and some sheet steel, but I got lazy and just said Ding-Dong into the mic. Now, when I get a visitor, that’s what I hear. Gives me a chuckle. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta laugh. You just gotta hug your shins, rock back and forth, and laugh.

I wiggle my way out of the crawlspace, scooting along on my shoulder blades, rolling from one to the other, and pushing with my good foot.

Ding-Dong.

That’s me.

Ding-Dong.

I’m coming.

I pull myself out of the crawlspace and limp my way through the scattered debris. The climb up the ladder is slow with one hand and a sprained ankle. In the living quarters, I silence the alert using the switch by my sleep sack, then go up another flight into the command module. There’s a blast of static from the high frequency radio before a voice cuts in with a transmission.

“ —con 23, this is Sanity’s Edge, over.”

I lift the mic with my free hand and wince as a stab of pain shoots across my ribs. Glancing out the nearest porthole, I see a ship hovering three or four klicks away, red and green lights blinking on each wingtip. Long pods with glimmering gold tips hang beneath the wings. Lasers. Pointing at me.

“Beacon 23,” I say. “Go ahead, Sanity .”

Checking the scanners, I see she’s registered to a Delphi corporation. The Delphi system is a tax-free zone; a lot of privately owned vessels hail from there, even if they’ve never touched atmo in Delphi. They just do the bill of sale in orbit and scoot.

“Permission to dock,” the pilot radios. “ Official US marshal business.”

I glance back out the porthole. That ain’t no marshal boat out there. If she’s privately owned, and she’s really on marshal business, and she’s legally armed, then it can only be one thing: a bounty hunter. Looks like a whiff of excitement has drifted into old sector eight. I squeeze the mic.

“Beacons are NASA-oversight neutral territory,” I remind the captain. “By colregs, no arms are allowed on any beacon, nor are military or private security craft allowed to dock without warrant or express permission.”

Which is true and all, but what I’m really thinking is that the beacon’s a wreck, as am I, and I really don’t want visitors. I’m in my white NASA boxer briefs, and putting on a shirt with a bad shoulder is a pain in the ass. Well, not the ass, exactly, but you know what I mean.

“Beaming the warrant to you now ,” the radio hisses.