The Void (3 page)

She smiled at him, and although this one was sincere, Aidan Connor had somehow never felt more unlucky in all his life.

Chapter 2

Aidan had never been a passenger on a starship. His work before had left him with precious few moments of down time, so lying in a bed in the ship's infirmary made the hours crawl by. Charlotte had become his constant companion, and the sight of the robotic arachnid scurrying about his body no longer brought a tingle of fear. Within a week, he could walk, and Dr. Jackson had given him permission to leave the sick bay.

It had not started well.

He had expected it. The sideways glances, the questioning stares. He had spent enough time in space to know the suspicion that follows a survivor, the weight that hangs round his neck. Yes, he had expected it, and it would be with him all his days. However, it was not company he sought, but distraction. And the ship provided plenty of that.

It was an older vessel, ten years or more, too big for artificial gravity even though the technology had been perfected since its construction. Thus it was long and cigar-shaped, a vast metal tube that housed enough medical equipment to treat the battle fleet of which it was a part.

The central portion spun, and in spinning, it gave the illusion of gravity to those inside. Since gravity was an illusion anyway, no one ever knew the difference. He studied every part of it from stem to stern and the captain was even kind enough to allow him a visit to the bridge. The only portal to the outside was there; windows were always dangerous and did nothing but weaken the structural integrity of a ship.

From the bridge he was able to see Jupiter as it passed them by. More impressive was the carrier group itself, the massive
Agamemnon
thundering above the medical frigate—by far the largest vessel he had ever been in—dwarfing the
Alabama
. Yet even the wonders of the ship were finite, and once he had seen everything, the boredom returned.

The days crept by and at times it seemed they would never reach Earth orbit.

“You might as well relax,” Dr. Jackson would say. “It's another two weeks till we get home.”

Aidan frowned. The cargo ships he was accustomed to moved at much greater speed, and he had never had to sit and wait around like this before. He didn't want to act like a spoiled child but he couldn't help it. Dr. Jackson saw. “The fleet moves at its own speed, Mr. Connor. You know that. It's not as if we aren't all ready to get home. I've only got two patients on this trip and that's two more than I normally have.”

If Aidan hadn't been looking, he might not have seen. But he was, and he did.

“Two patients?”

Dr. Jackson paused, and in that pause, Aidan knew he had come upon something that she had not meant to reveal. “Well . . .” she began, “we had an incident.”

“An incident?”

Aidan watched as the doctor blushed and part of him felt bad for pushing the matter.

“I really shouldn't say anything else. It's a long story anyway.”

“Doc,” he said, “I've got nothing but time.”

Everything, every tenet of her profession, every piece of common sense, every rule of etiquette, dictated that she stop there. That she say nothing else. But for any number of reasons, she did the opposite.

“Well, our mission was to Eridani,” she said. “And of course, we had to jump.”

Aidan saw her pause and he worried that the story was slipping. “And?” he urged.

She exhaled deeply and let herself fall into a chair. “We've all felt it,” she said. “All of us. If you say you haven't, you're a liar. I hate the sleep.” She stared at the floor, as if Aidan wasn't even there. “I hate it. Everyone does. It's the dreams, you know?” She looked up. “But of course you do. You've seen it too.”

They sat there together, silently. In their minds' eyes, they saw the same thing. But different. Unique. Special to them both, in the way that only something so horrible can be special.

“They have testing, of course. Special testing for the Navy. You don't make the fleet unless you are rated to the point that you never should crack. And most people never do. But this trip. . .”

“God.”

“Yeah.”

It happened sometimes, more often than the spacing guilds wanted to admit. The people who worked the deep space trade didn't often talk about it. It was taboo. As if talking about the creeping madness had the power to bring it about. But sometimes people snapped, whether you talked about it or not.

He had heard that space didn't always drive men mad. Back when all anyone did was float around the Earth, go to the moon. Then space was an adventure. But it wasn't like that anymore. People said that the problems began when men started going farther. To Mars. Venus. Beyond.

The general consensus was that Earth was the key. People were fine when they could see Earth. When it was just beyond them. Like they could reach out and touch it. But when it was no more than a great, big, blue star . . . when it was gone, truly, irrevocably gone . . . then they would break. And it's a dangerous thing, that. Nothing worse than a madman when you are oh-so-very far from home.

That was a lie, of course. A shroud to cover a darker truth, one that no one wanted to face. But he knew, just as they all did. It wasn't Earth. It wasn't the distance. Not just the distance, anyway. The distance probably had some effect, when the dreams came. And they always did. It was the dreams they all feared.

“I just feel so awful,” Dr. Jackson said. “Lieutenant Felix was such a good kid.”

“Was it his first trip?”

“How did you know?” she said.

He shrugged. “I've heard that's when it normally happens. If you make it through your first time, you can probably keep it together.”

“Probably,” she said. “But there have been those who have been in the deep for decades. And then one day . . .” She snapped her fingers, and Aidan shuddered.

“And that's what happened to Lieutenant Felix?”

“Yes,” she said. “The fleet assembled a month ago at Armstrong. It was a routine mission, out to Eridani. We were on a six-month cruise. Basic maneuvers.”

“But that's not how it worked out?”

“Not quite.”

There was a chirping sound from Charlotte. The doctor pushed a button and Captain Gravely's face appeared in midair.

One command from the captain later, and Aidan was alone with the rumble of the ship's engines and the soft whir of the spider's computer. Jackson left him with more questions than answers, and he needed to know the rest. For the same reasons, no doubt, that Jackson wanted to tell him. And so he made a decision.

“Charlotte, what level is Lieutenant Felix being held on?”

A screen appeared above the spider's head and displayed the schematics for level two. It was probably a foolish decision, and he doubted anything would come of it, but his curiosity was too great. He left the infirmary behind.

He had become familiar to most of the crew, and though he would call none of them friends, they mostly left him alone. It was not difficult to find the brig. A lone MP sat at the console near its entrance, and if he was surprised to see Aidan, he didn't show it.

At first, he simply stood at the entrance. Of course, Aidan had known there would be a guard, but for some reason, he had not taken the time to think up an excuse. Thus he simply told the truth.

“I'd like to see Lieutenant Felix.”

The MP looked at him for a while. He opened his mouth, like he wanted to say something but then his eyes went hazy and his face seemed to go limp.

“Felix, huh?” he finally said, looking back down at his console. “So you want to see the murderer.”

“Murderer?”

Aidan was shocked. Well, almost. But not really.

“They say he's crazy, you know?” the man said, standing up and walking over to Aidan, stopping only a few inches from his face. He was so close that Aidan could taste his breath. “That he didn't know what he was doing. That the dreams made him do it. Can you believe that? Not that he would be the first . . . or the last.”

The man laughed but Aidan didn't laugh with him. They stared at each other for several awkward seconds that seemed to stretch to eternity, but then the man said, “I mean, we've all had them right? We've all seen it. We've all seen . . .
them.
But I never killed anybody. Have you?” Then he laughed again.

“I just want to see him,” Aidan said. “If that's all right.”

The man's smile faded.

“Be my guest,” he said. “Maybe you can figure it out. They know where he got the ax, of course. Fire control. But when did he wake up? Why? And what did Ensign Kelly do to deserve that?”

“He killed him with an ax?”

The man cocked his head to the right and looked at Aidan like he was a fool. “Of course he did.”

“Yes,” Aidan said, “of course he did.”

The MP shook his head and looked down at the computer in his hands. Aidan was about to say something else when a metal door opened that led to a long row of cells. Aidan stood there, half-expecting the guard to change his mind. But the man only stared at him.

Aidan stepped through the portal and shivered as the door slid shut behind him. The brig was no different than any other room on the ship. The same white walls, the same bright lights flooding down over him. Only one cell was occupied.

There was no door. No bars. Just an empty space where the door should be. Only the slight shimmer of the atmosphere, the electricity that tingled up and down his spine, let Aidan know that something other than thin air separated them.

Lieutenant Felix sat in the corner of his cell. His head was against the wall but his eyes were on Aidan. It was as if he was expecting him.

“Hello, Aidan Connor,” he said. Then he smiled, and the look in those eyes told Aidan that he relished the shock in his own. Aidan knew the obvious question, but he refused to offer it.

“Hello, Lieutenant Felix.”

“Well, now that the introductions are out of the way . . .” Felix trailed off into silence, and the two men regarded each other until Aidan asked the first thing that came to mind.

“Why are you here?”

The grin came slowly to Felix's face, but the laugh was hot on its heels. “Oh, Mr. Connor. I’m where I’m supposed to be. You, however, are not where you belong.”

“And how would you know anything about me?”

Still grinning, Felix pulled himself to his feet. Aidan watched as he walked to the boundary between them, running his hand down the barrier, making the field crackle. “You ask as if you do not know,” he said finally. “You ask as if I shouldn’t know. But I know many things. I have witnessed many things. Many things indeed. Many things about
you
.”

The smile faded and something about Felix's calm demeanor unnerved Aidan until he could no longer stand it. “You can play games with me, Lieutenant, but convincing me you’re insane will do you no good.” As he said it, Aidan hoped that this
was
an act. But somehow he knew it was not.

“Mr. Connor, I’m not insane. I've simply seen things that you have not. Seen things you cannot imagine. Seen you.”

The air seemed to grow thick and heavy around Aidan, and the electric hum drilled into his brain. The image in front of him began to shake, to twist, to shimmer like it had when Felix had touched the force field between them.

Aidan wavered on the verge of collapse and he felt as though he might be sick. But the wave passed and there stood Felix, clear as day, glaring at him. For the first time, Aidan wondered why he had come here, why he had felt compelled to do so. Even as he wondered, he knew the answer to his own questions.

“I've never met you before in my life.”

Felix grinned and looked at Aidan the way a parent might a child when faced with disappointment. “Come now, Mr. Connor, it’s not of such ordinary things that I speak, as you are well aware. In life, we have never met. But in death? Perhaps.”

“Why did you kill Ensign Kelly?”

“Why do you want to know?” Felix asked, allowing Aidan to change the subject. Silence greeted the question and Felix's eyes grew cold. “I killed him to save us all.”

“To save us? To save who? From what?”

Felix's eyes now rested somewhere over Aidan's shoulder, in the middle distance between here and there. He spoke truth to deaf ears.

“All of us. This ship. The fleet. Maybe more. I knew they would not believe and so it fell to me. To do what I must. And in even your eyes I see the doubt; even in the eyes of one who should know.”

“I don't understand.”

Felix laughed. “There is a hole in your mind, Mr. Connor. A gap in your consciousness. But it is no matter. You will see them again. You will see the ones who took Ensign Kelly. Who would have taken us all. Who almost took me. In that moment, when they held me in their hands, my eyes opened. And I saw beyond this ship to worlds as yet unknown. To darkened seas and night-black suns. I saw you. I know what you did, Mr. Connor. Even if no one else does. I know. And I know this too—a time will come when you will be called upon. In your hands will rest the fate of many. Perhaps then you can redeem your lost soul.”

Aidan did not speak as Felix backed away from him. He watched as the other man let his back hit the wall, sliding down to the floor below. The conversation was over, and Aidan had no more answers than when he came. He pressed a panel on the wall, and the door to the outside world slid open again. The MP spun around in his chair and looked up at him with a mixture of shock and fear.

“How the hell did you get in there?” he asked.

Aidan didn't bother to answer but walked back to the infirmary. Dr. Jackson was waiting as he stepped inside.

“Ah, Mr. Connor, I was just about to see if I could find you,” she said, holding a vial of his daily medication in her hands. He smiled but said nothing as she injected it. It stung considerably now, a good sign. 

“Did you make it down to see Lieutenant Felix?” she asked.

“I did.”

“I knew you’d go. Too curious for your own good. I guess you managed to sweet talk your way past the guard?” Aidan nodded while she shook her head. “Well, I suppose that turned out to be an unproductive visit, huh?”