The Void (21 page)

“Still no good, Captain.”

Gravely cursed under her breath. “Guess we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Lights it is.”

“Captain,” Aidan said, “maybe we should reconsider all this.”

“This was your idea, Mr. Connor.”

“Yes ma'am, and I am beginning to think it was a bad one. Maybe we could send in a Charlotte.”

“We’re already here, Aidan. We need to get this done. Fast.”

Gravely tapped her left wrist and a computer screen appeared. Another tap activated her external speaker. She hooked her computer into the universal computer port and hoped that there was enough power in the ship's batteries to broadcast. 

“Passengers and crew of the
Singularity
,” she said. “My name is Captain Caroline Gravely of the American Merchant Marine ship
Chronos.
We intersected with you twelve hours ago, but despite our repeated hails, we have failed to make contact. You are adrift in a warp channel and your current trajectory takes you into a gravity well. If you can hear my voice, please respond.”

Her words thundered into the blackness. To Ridley this was an utterly useless gesture. There was no one there and he had a feeling that even if there was, it wasn't someone they would want to find. When no one answered back, Gravely turned and looked at him. He just shook his head.

“Pursuant to Article 4-7 of Spacing Guild Regulations governing ships in the trade,” she continued, facing the darkness once again, “we are coming aboard on a rescue mission. If you are injured, stay where you are. We will find you.”

Gravely reached up and tapped the side of her helmet. Ridley did the same. Two beams of light erupted, and together they cut deeply into the darkness ahead. Yet still, it was the darkness, not the light, that held sway.

Gravely took a cautious step over the threshold of the airlock door. The absence of light was oppressive, and she found herself jerking her head from side to side, trying to illuminate as much of the room as possible with the beams from her helmet. She was in the antechamber of the airlock. Suits hung from hooks on the side of the wall, an American flag stitched on the chest of each.

“Definitely one of ours,” Gravely said.

Back on the
Chronos
, Aidan was staring at the screen, trying to straighten out in his head what was wrong with this picture. It didn't take long.

“Those are the old Raytex suits, Captain.”

Gravely rubbed the fabric between her fingers and even through her own suit's second skin, she could feel that he was right.

“Strange that they would have outdated equipment,” Ridley said. “Maybe these suits weren't high on their priority list.”

Gravely frowned. “Maybe.”

Outdated, maybe. But in pristine condition. Suits hung neatly on their racks. Boots were lined up in straight lines beneath them. Whatever had come to this place, it never made it to the airlock.

Ridley shined his light on the inner door of the airlock. It was their entrance to the rest of the ship. Gravely approached it and was about to engage the manual release when the door swung open with a bang. Normally, with the roaring of engines and the noise of a ship, they wouldn't have even noticed. But in that silence, the opening of the door boomed into the darkness of the corridors beyond, echoing up and down the hallways.

Their lights cut through the glowering black air. In the swirling dust, they saw many things. People, animals, amorphous shapes that they hoped never existed in the world they knew. But it was simply an illusion. Just falling dust in the silence.

Gravely went first, stepping gingerly through the open portal, shining her light down both hallways as she did. There was nothing, just emptiness.

“Right or left?” Ridley asked.

“Right,” Gravely said, taking a step. “Always right.”

They inched down the corridor, Gravely with her hand on the sidearm she never left the ship without. The hallway was empty, the blank holoscreens that lined them mocking technology. The light from their helmets gave some illumination, but not as much as they should have. It was as if the darkness and swirling dust were thicker than they should be, blocking the feeble beams.

On the bridge of the
Chronos
, Rebecca and Jack stood next to Aidan. Every step that Gravely and Ridley took was broadcast on the great screens above them. Rebecca was watching their progress. Jack was watching Aidan. Ever since Gravely and Ridley had entered those black tunnels, Aidan had not stopped shaking. Now beads of sweet were starting to trickle down his face. Jack wasn't often nervous, but Aidan was starting to bother him.

Since he was watching Aidan, Jack didn't see the shadow that seemed to race across the screen above him, just at the edge of Gravely's light. He just heard Rebecca gasp.

“Did you see that?”

It was Gravely, though Ridley had never heard her like that. He would have taken mental note, but he had seen something too, and it had shaken him. It was no shadow, but a figure. A woman, he would swear. In a long, flowing dress of white fabric that shimmered in the darkness.

“How . . .” he murmured.

No one heard him. Gravely simply stared, wondering if her eyes had deceived her or if she had really seen him. An old man, with back stooped low from the pain of years and the burden of hard work. One who bore the image of her face long before she was even dreamt of by her parents or theirs.

Rebecca saw it too, back on the bridge. Saw a little girl on a bicycle, an impossible image drenched in shadow but real nonetheless. And then there was Aidan, his shaking hand covering his mouth as he stared up at the screen where he had seen himself only a few seconds before, walking through corridors that were all too familiar, even if his sane mind cried out that he had never seen them before. Not in life, that was. Not in his waking hours.

“Aidan,” Gravely said, her voice shaking almost as badly as the hand that held the pistol in front of her, as if anything in this world could protect her from that image, “rewind please. Tell us what you see.”

Aidan sat in his chair on the bridge, staring down at the command on his computer screen, the one that he need only tap to rewind the video and see what had passed only a few moments prior. His entire being rebelled. He did not want to see. He did not want to know. He felt Rebecca place her hand on his shoulder, looked up at her and saw the same fear in her eyes. But she needed to know, too. He looked back down at the computer screen and tapped it once.

The video flashed, and then the feeling of déjà vu hit them all as they watched a scene they had already witnessed. Aidan held his breath as Ridley and Gravely approached the point where the figure had been. He felt Rebecca’s hand squeeze his shoulder. Then the moment came . . . and nothing happened.

“Did you see that?” They heard Gravely ask, once again. This time, their answer was different. They had seen nothing.

“That's not possible.” Aidan rewound the video again. It was no use. The same blank emptiness met their eyes. “There was something there!” Aidan said, looking up at Rebecca. Now there was doubt in her eyes where fear had been.

“What did you see?” Jack asked.

“I saw . . .” Aidan began. Even as he started he knew he couldn't finish. What had he seen? And how to explain it?

Jack sighed. “What about you?” he asked Rebecca. “What did you see?”

She hesitated. “Nothing,” she said finally. “Just a trick of the light I guess.”

“Aidan. Aidan, what's on the tape?” It was Gravely.

Aidan looked up at Jack but he simply shrugged. Rebecca shook her head.

“We don't see anything, Captain. Nothing on the screen. Nothing on the tape. It's just you and Dr. Ridley and the dust.”

Gravely heard Aidan but didn't believe him. Neither did Ridley, who stood peering into the darkness as if staring long enough into it would reveal its secrets.

“It can't be,” he said. “I know I saw something. I know I did. You saw it too, right? I saw how you reacted.”

She had seen or thought she had. She also remembered what Ridley had said about tricks the mind might play. Now, here, staring through that black shroud, lit only by the feeble light of their helmets, she began to believe that their minds saw what they wanted, whether it was there or not.

“There was nothing there, Doctor. You heard them. They looked at the film.”

“Maybe . . .” Ridley replied, “maybe what we saw can't be recorded on a camera or captured on film.”

Gravely didn't respond to that. Rather, she took another step forward, motioning for him to follow. He shook his head but followed nonetheless. There was no use resisting.

The corridor opened into another, this one with doors along both sides.

“Crew quarters, maybe?” Ridley offered.

Gravely tried the door nearest them, ready for whatever might emerge from the room beyond when it opened. But it didn't budge and attaching the battery pack didn't help.

“Locked. Once we get the power back on, we can have the computer override their security measures. For now, let's move on.”

At its end, the corridor split in half, leading off to the left and right.

“Right, I assume?”

“Always right,” Gravely answered.

She attached the battery pack, and the door slid open.

It was then they found the body.

Ridley stumbled backward and would have fallen over had the other door not caught him. Gravely pointed her pistol at the dead thing, as if it might rise up at any moment to attack her.

“Mr. Connor,” she said, “are you getting this?”

“Yes, Captain,” Aidan answered. “We are.”

It took only a moment for Ridley to regain his composure, his fear masking whatever embarrassment he might have felt. He knelt down next to the body. It was slumped over on its side, long blond hair falling down around its shoulders. He presumed this was a woman. He put his hand on the shoulder and rolled it onto its back. Gravely gasped and on the bridge, Aidan and Rebecca both turned away. Only Jack showed no reaction.

“Who could do this?” Ridley whispered. As he said it, he realized the true horror contained in that simple statement, for someone
had
done this. They had done it with their bare hands. 

Ridley had been right. It was a woman, though it would have been difficult to tell from the face alone—or what was left of it. The face was shredded, covered in deep gashes that ran from the scalp to the throat, chunks of flesh having been ripped from her cheeks and neck.

“Claw marks,” Ridley thought. If only they had been from an animal, that would have been so much better. But no, the thick red trenches spaced awkwardly across her skin could only come from human fingers.

There were empty black holes where her eyes should have been. Ridley felt a wave of nausea pass over him when he involuntarily thought of Cyrus. What was left of her skin was a chalky white, with spider webs of pale blue lines that crisscrossed its surface. What was left of her mouth was locked open in a scream, the last sound she had ever made.

“What happened here, Doctor? Could she have done this herself?”

“No, there's no skin under her fingernails,” Ridley said, holding up one of her hands. “And the scratches didn't kill her. Her throat was crushed. No, Captain, this was murder. Judging by the state of the body, this happened a week ago, maybe. Week and a half, tops.”

“So she's been lying here for a week?”

“I'd say so. That tells me a couple of things. One, we've got a madman on board. Two . . . whatever struggle followed, he won.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, you tell me. If the rest of the crew had taken care of whoever did this, would they have left her body here?”

“No,” Gravely said, tightening her grip on her gun, “I guess you're right.”

“We have to get off of this ship, Captain. There's no one here worth saving.”

“I tend to agree.”

The words had barely left her mouth when they heard the sound. It was the sound of metal on metal, a grinding . . .

sssshhhhhrrrrrriiiiiieeeeekkkkk

. . . that rippled up Gravely's spine and made every hair on her body stand on end.

“What the hell was that?” As if anyone would answer. As if Ridley wanted to know the answer.

They backed away from the body, Gravely keeping her gun pointed at the darkness, but finding scarce comfort there. They inched themselves backward down the corridor, unwilling to turn away from the noise. Ridley would have sworn there was something watching them. Just beyond their beams of light. Matching them step for step, but making no sound. Stalking them. Like prey.

They made their way back to the airlock, closing the door behind them. Ridley had never been happier to step into the void. They latched themselves to the line of the grappling hook and swung into space, their momentum carrying their weightless bodies down the thick wire to the waiting ship. In the instant before Ridley pushed himself from the metal floor of the ship, he heard another sound, that of a woman's voice.

She whispered only one word.

“David.”

Chapter 16

The door to the bridge slid open and Captain Gravely marched in, removing her gloves and throwing them down on one of the consoles. Ridley was right behind her.

“Mr. Connor, I've seen enough here. If you'll withdraw the grappling hooks and call back the Charlottes. Then take us a safe distance out. We've done all we can. There's no one left to save on that ship.”

“Yes, ma'am.” In seconds, the engines of the ship fired and the
Chronos
began to back away. From the other side of the
Singularity
came two whirling balls of metal, thrusters on either side, guiding the two Charlottes back into the ship.  

“Captain.”

Rebecca turned and looked at Jack. He had been hovering in the background, but now he had stepped to the middle of the bridge. She felt her stomach drop. So it would come to this.

“Just a second, Mr. Crawford. I'd like to put some distance between us and that other ship.”