Page 12

12

Two Years Ago

M ost ships don’t crash like the Roundabout did. They don’t hit planets. Most ships that are lost are lost at either takeoff or landing. That’s the dangerous bit. Leaving a world or coming home to one. The stuff in the middle? That’s the easy part. Coasting through the black. Little to hit, few reasons to break out the highly volatile fuel.

But I wouldn’t have a job if things never went wrong.

If a ship malfunctions in flight, typically there’s a warning. Escape pods go out, the crew’s picked up, and if it’s not worth hauling back anywhere, they let the dead ship float, empty. Perfect for looting.

The other kind of ghost ship is the kind where the escape pods don’t go out.

I’ve seen it more than once. Sometimes sabotage, particularly if it’s a competing company. Sometimes attack. There are pirates. Some tiny worlds with cult-like colonies that fiercely protect their sector. No one ever said space was safe, and then humans go in and make it even less so.

I once came across a ghost ship that broadcast a perpetual biohazard warning on loop. I brought Glory close, using the front flood lamp to illuminate the dark windows. There weren’t many portholes that could show me anything, but I’ll never forget the way the bridge looked. A beam of light cutting across the grotesquely twisted faces. Some sort of sickness; I don’t know what. Killed them all. Half a dozen people, at least, all piled up in the nose of the ship, fingers splayed on the carbonglass as if they’d been trying to scratch their way to the void. Glory ’s light made their open eyes reflect strangely. It felt like they were watching me. I didn’t board that ship.

The Rose was something else.

I did all the scans. Checked everything. I could tell before I boarded that the ship had had a major malfunction, the escape pods hadn’t been evacuated, and there was no one left alive on board. Floating in space with a full cargo meant it was an easy job. I opened up Glory ’s bay door, flew out to the Rose. This was before I had a jaxon jet, just a regular unit.

To get in, I had to activate the emergency latch on the depressurization chamber, but the ship was completely dead— no power at all, let alone gravity generators, oxygen flow, or any other type of life support. There was nothing to stop me from cranking open the door; it was designed to be accessed in case of a breach or failure like this.

I can never explain the full eeriness of a ghost ship. Even the ones where I know what’s happened, boarding a ghost is like a violation. You’re going into someone’s home. You should be stopped.

Because every ship is a home. People like Captain Ursula, who treats the Halifax like a tool, don’t always know that. But I bet Nandina sees the med bay as her home, even if this is a temporary job for her, even if she claims otherwise. Humans do that. They turn the place where they feel safe into a home, and even when they know that home won’t last, they fall in love with it. A little, anyway.

Ghost ships are dark. Fuck, space is dark. People forget that because we use external floodlights and internal electronics, and when a ship is lived in, it’s never fully dark. But ghost ships are.

When I boarded the Rose, I had my helmet’s headlamp on, and I had two handhelds in my belt. I always carry extra lights on ghost-ship salvages; I learned the hard way how difficult it is to get off a ship that’s not yours when your light goes dark.

But the glow from headlamps and handhelds is dim, sporadic. They illuminate a circle at a time, and they cast shadows, long shadows that shouldn’t exist in space.

Not everything wants to be seen.

It wasn’t the bodies that bothered me on the Rose. To be honest, I expected the bodies. No pods evacuated, no shuttle...a ship doesn’t fly without a crew. So, a dead ship would have dead humans on board. That was always going to be the case.

What got me was that it had been a family. Eight people total. One elderly man, three middle-aged adults, four children. I found them in various parts of the ship. The older man and one adult were on the bridge. I found another adult in the mess hall. The third adult, a female with long black hair that hid her face, floating around her like a halo, was in a room with all the children. There were little toys—building blocks and a stuffed animal and those posable dolls that can interact with augmented reality games but are still fun on their own.

None of them were strapped down, not even the people on the bridge. They were all floating. Which meant that they didn’t actively crash—they were just living their lives. Until something went wrong. Something sudden. Something catastrophic.

I had to find out. I located the record box in the bridge, the thing every ship is required to have, took it back to Glory , and hooked it up to power. Something evacuated all the oxygen on the ship. There was a record of a slow leak for a long time—at least two cycles—but the life-support unit compensated, so there was no noticeable decrease in available air. Then something broke, and all the O 2 was discharged at once.

None of this felt like sabotage, but it also didn’t make sense.

I dug deeper.

Some repairs—to fix the leak, I assume—had been made to the O 2 filter. I went back aboard the Rose , careful this time to avoid seeing the bodies. Took the main panel down, removed the unit. I didn’t notice it at first. I had to use my visor’s visual enhancements to see the tiny crack in the O-ring. A little circle used to seal the outtake tube. It was small enough to slide over my gloved finger, although that made the hairline break in the plexi-steel more visible.

I spent hours in the dark, trying to see if there was anything else.

But in the end, it came down to one O-ring. One individual part. Those damn things cost almost nothing on land. You can pick them up at any dock.

They’re so tiny.

But when the seal broke, the tube popped off.

There were supposed to be failsafes; of course there were. Every ship has automatic failsafes.

But this had been quick.

And the failsafes had failed.

And the entire ship had died because one tiny ring cracked.

I’ve been telling this story to Rian the whole time I’m making my slow way back up the cliff.

But what I don’t tell him is this:

That moment changed me on a core level. I can see that cracked O-ring as clearly as I can see the world in front of me. I wake up every morning, and I remind myself how futile it all is. You can do everything right, try to be good, try to do good, and sometimes it won’t matter. Your O-ring gets a crack in it, and you die before you have time to panic. A nothing part, ignored until it’s broken, and then you’re dead.

You and everyone you love just cease to be.

That’s how close life and death are. Not just here, in space or on a volatile planet. Everywhere. Everywhere in the universe, you’re one cracked O-ring away from total failure. And we all just go through each day, ignoring that.

Pretending like we don’t see the cracks.

Like the cracks aren’t going to break all the way.

Life is a fucking miracle. How did the right atoms collide and the right DNA strands evolve and the right lucky breaks in planetary development build up over trillions of years in the impossible expanse of all of time and space to make you ? A series of accidents and luck and planning and fate and maybe God or maybe just the sheer chaos of it all conspired to make the life within you, all eternity stretching to a pinpoint that coincides with your first breath.

And a tiny cracked O-ring can take it all away.

It’s so, so hard to live.

And so, so easy to die.

It’s just that the O-ring is deep inside the life-support unit, buried under outtake valves and wiring harnesses and bypass tubes. You have to look for it.

You have to look for the crack in it.

But you can’t forget it’s there. You can’t ever forget that.

· · ·

Telling this has taken more time than I anticipated. But it’s served Rian’s goal well; I forgot about the physical pain of climbing. I was back on the Rose , back in the dark, not here, scaling a cliff.

I can see the top of the ridge now, can see Rian’s helmeted face peering over the edge at me. Almost there.

I track my course—not much farther—but pull in close on a ledge that is big enough for me to stand with both feet planted. I keep my front to the wall.

“What are you doing?” Rian asks.

“Just one quick break before the end,” I say. “I’m not my best right now.” One wrong move, and all this work will be for nothing.

I check my visor’s readouts. Fucking finally , I think fiercely. A few adjustments to my suit, and I’m exactly where I want to be.

“All right, I told you my worst day,” I say, starting to climb again. “Tell me yours.”

“Oh, that’s too long of a story.” Rian sounds happier now. “You’re almost out.”

I heave myself up to another handhold, scrambling my legs until I get traction. At least my boots grip well. I feel the line tighten—Rian’s risking the manual crank to help me, reaching down toward me with one gloved hand.

“Fine, tell me about your best day, then,” I say.

“That’s easy.” He’s close enough now that I can see his grinning face behind his visor. “Today. Today’s the best day.”

My hand reaches his, and he yanks me up the last bit. I fall down on the flat rock at the top of the cliff, panting, staring up at the stars and the void between them.

My hand still in his.