#19 ISOLA64
Interplanetary travel had lulled into sweet dreams half a dozen generations before ours. A chimera many times romanticized with utter—yet neat—nonsenses like hyperspace, star gates or teleportation. Sadly, those utopian ideas never saw the light of day. And humanity kept running on that old nuclear fission devouring uranium and plutonium.
Proxima shone at 268,000 AU. This doesn’t tell you anything, does it? In comparison, the distance between the main belt and Mars was only 0.5 astronomical unit. Daunting, right? In front of the unattainable infinite, the solar system was only a grain of sand. Yet, trips between orbital stations were nightmarishly long despite Baltimore Industries’ constant engineering efforts.
No one in their right mind would venture alone into the cosmos. Aside from the technical aspects of engines and piloting, I guess the real limit of space exploration in adition to radiation was loneliness. It wasn’t a matter of boredom or cabin fever. But rather the overwhelming presence of nothing and everything—something the human mind couldn’t really fathom.
I think the emptiness of the universe terrified the Earthers at least as much as it fascinated them. And they weren’t the only ones: felines shared this feeling. Fortunately, my sapiens was my sugar. My sapiens always made me forget the suffocating void and the remoteness. But lately, my sapiens have been leaving me alone all too often.
“Ali? This is an outrage! My stomach has been screaming for food ever since Las Pallas!”
My copilot didn’t hear me. She must have been at the other end of the ship, watching gullible TV shows on NBC. That was her main occupation during her long recovery from the battle of the Blazing Firmament; her mouth always full of Tuna Mayo Doritos and sometimes a shot of insulin in her arm.
Perfect! It was time to sneak a smoke. Since the death of Ada and Rodrigue, I have resumed this bad habit. A lesser evil.
Alas, the unstoppable flair of my partner flushed me out faster than a Venusian mutant would take out a corvette. “You’ve been smoking again!” she yelled, poking her head into the cockpit.
I gave her the round eyes—another old habit—but it had no effect with a cigarette between my lips. “It’s your fault! You’re not taking care of me,” I huffed, drifting over the control panel.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still recovering! Denver almost ate me on the Polo!”
“Big deal! Meanwhile—I’m starving.”
My partner returned to the hold, and sent me a marmalade toast shortly afterwards. A carton of milk with its special feline straw followed it. Finally, this little train of treats ended with a nicotine patch.
Minutes later, I was closing the boring computer log to enjoy my slice of bread when the dashboard beeped. On the right monitor blinked the ancient symbol of the telephone handset, which caught my eye. “Ali! We’re getting a signal!”
My sapiens returned to the cockpit, dragging her feet despite the weightlessness. She verbally commanded the radio channel to open. The Kitty’s speakers sputtered before transmitting an ominous panicked call: “This is Connie… bounty hunter… request emergency assistance at attached coordinates… contract on the… dangerous target… request emergency assistance at attached coordinates…”
The message, punctuated by interference, was running on a loop. Alas, without Connie’s ID number it was impossible to know who we were dealing with—or if she was even related to the Alliance.
“It wasn’t a good idea to take a circuitous route,” Ali complained. “Gods’ goons or not, we should have joined the highway through Ceres. So much for not paying the toll, you cheap mop!”
“What does the map say about the coordinates?” I asked, taking my seat and ignoring her impudent remark.
“An insignificant asteroid,” my partner answered while playing with her shoulder’s stitches from the tip of her fingers. “We’re running on the edge of the main belt, so that’s not surprising. It’s not even listed by the mining administration.”
If the venal vultures of the Belt Mining Guild hadn’t archived this chunk of rock, it meant it was nothing more than a pile of grit. “Do you feel ready to go back to business?”
Behind me, Ali fought the weightlessness to apply new gauze on her still-bleeding wounds. “Sure. There ain’t much to do here but watching Quantum Leap all day long anyway.”
Slightly bigger than a mediocre orbital station, the unnamed planetoid was a Marengo boulder with a surface scoured by solar radiation.
“Asteroids are seldom cheerful, but this one is gloomier than average,” my sapiens had commented as she relentlessly scanned the various available frequencies in search of a more stable S.O.S. “It looks like an old Oreo after it went through a washing machine.”
She appeared to be right despite ignoring what a washing machine was. This celestial body possessed an ominous aura while looking like an aged cookie. “No contact on the surface? No new messages?”
“Always the same one. Over and over. And no one seems to have noticed us. We’re not getting any feedback…”
“That’s peculiar. The Swallow is a stealth ship but we’re in visual contact and all our input frequencies are open.”
We went around the planetoid where no sign of a crash nor evidence of a forced or intentional landing could be found anywhere on the surface. If the bounty hunter and her prey were hiding on this asteroid, they must have sought refuge within it.
Ali quickly spotted a cave wide enough for a medium-sized vessel to enter at the periphery of a dismantling crater confirmed as the origin of the distress signal. Inside, a weak magnetic activity disturbed our instruments and we had to navigate blind, but not without the support of our searchlights. Thanks to them, we could promptly detect evidence of human operations: powerful drills had widened the walls, forming a perfectly cylindrical tunnel.
“Cut the turbine,” my partner advised. “Let’s move forward with the stabilizers.”
Good call. There were many cracks in the ceiling, and we didn’t want to be another distress signal.
The Kitty slid silently through the rock dust and the few shards that clashed against our armor before we arrived above a shallow chasm, also artificial. Whoever lived here was better camouflaged than Mancéphalius or Carole Selena.
“Look down,” I said as I slowly began to descend. “It’s quite a yard sale.”
The precipice’s bottom appeared to be segmented with hexagonal concrete alcoves. It was like flying over a giant abandoned beehive. Each of the ten cells housed a vessel of different size and shape. The older ones, with their tapered wings and peeling red paint, dated from the early space age in the sector.
“Not a single dock looks free, I’ll try to find another one by persevering through the passageway there!” Hovering above the alcoves, I had identified a narrowed groove that continued deeper in the orbiting rock. A second option would be to switch position with a ship already moored in a cavity. A dangerous move as it could fall into pieces and obstruct my reduced vision.
“I’ll get my suit ready and jump from here. I see an airlock for outdoor strolls.”
I agreed and synchronized the computer on my partner’s wrist with the wireless communication system. “Be careful. We don’t know who Connie was dealing with and what we’re going to find. Plus, you seem to be recovering slower than usual from your injuries…”
Ali was already putting on her pink space suit over her bandages. With her repaired helmet screwed on her head, she checked the oxygen filter and the various instruments. “Don’t you worry about me. It’s gonna be fine. It’s just a ghost asteroid.”
“Sure,” I grumbled. “Don’t you remember Horror Planet? Because I do.”
Ali had already jumped into the frozen void. I saw her float to the opening of this curious abandoned station before resuming my exploration.
“Lee?” The signal crackled a bit, but my sapiens’s voice remained clear enough. “Do you copy?”
“Yes. Are you inside? Did you step upon weird eggs or half-melted multi-headed dogs?”
“Not yet,” she sighed. “I opened the airlock to slip in and initiate pressure equalization. If I don’t get mashed in a few seconds, I should get into this kind of military base, and explore it without wasting my oxygen.”
Perfect. The place still had its atmosphere. That also meant the cantonment’s main functions were still operational and thus a computer was running. “Can’t you hook up the new camera?” I asked, trying to activate it remotely.
“Bad idea. The audio is already draining my battery… and the signal will be awful inside with all that concrete. It’s… if I can hear you…”
“Be careful, dear.”
All I heard in response was the cocking of the .50 caliber weapon. Despite her injuries, Ali had things under control.
