Brothers in Exile_Sons of the Starfarers Read online

  He stopped and stared at the opposite door. The rhythmic hiss of the airflow mingled with the silent pounding of his heart as he wondered what lay on the other side. The sweat pooling against the back of his neck felt strangely cold. He wished his brother would hurry up.

  “All right,” Aaron’s voice came clearly in his ear. The suit’s radio sounded much better than the external microphone.

  “Are you ready?”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  “Great,” said Isaac. “Let’s get started.”

  The door behind them shut, and a low hiss sounded through the external microphone, as if through a long tunnel. The access panel by the outer door flashed green. Isaac pressed his gloved palm against it, and the light flashed yellow. After a ten second wait, the airlock doors parted.

  Isaac held his breath. On the other side, a similar durasteel-plated room waited for them. The lights, however, were not working. He activated his headlight and stepped over the threshold onto the derelict station.

  “Does the gravity feel a bit heavier on this side?” Aaron asked as he followed him on board. The airlock doors on the Medea remained open.

  “Don’t know. We’re still too close to the ship to tell.”

  Isaac waited for the access panel to flash green, and when it failed to do so, he pressed his gloved palm against it anyway. The inner door hissed open.

  If the air on the station was any different from the air on the Medea, he couldn’t tell. However, splotches of black mold on the opposite bulkhead told him that they’d been right to suit up. A thin layer of dust coated the floor, and the lights—such as they were—had dimmed so significantly with time that they seemed to cast more shadows than light. Isaac stepped through the doorway, and a small cloud of dust rose up around his feet.

  “Wow,” Aaron’s voice transmitted over the suit-to-suit radio. “This place is a mess.”

  “Step carefully, and stay close. We don’t want to take any unnecessary risks.”

  For once, Aaron didn’t object.

  Using their headlights for illumination, they climbed a set of stairs and walked slowly out into the main rimside corridor. It was almost twenty meters wide, with the docking nodes in the center. Long, narrow windows ran along the walls and floor. Several of the ceiling lights had already burned out, so that it was difficult to see the curvature of the station. Still, that familiar sense of an inverted horizon was enough to make Isaac feel as if he’d been here before, shuffling through a perverse dreamscape.

  “Is that a computer terminal?” Aaron asked, motioning to a set of display screens set above a kiosk next to the airlock. All but one of them were dead, and even it was flickering.

  “If none of these computers are working, I don’t think we can refuel here.”

  “Nah, we’ll be fine. We can always access the tanks externally. I got a good look as we were coming in, and it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Great,” said Isaac. “Let’s just be sure we fill up with the right stuff. The markings on those tanks aren’t Gaian standard.”

  “When was the last time you saw anyone in the Far Outworlds follow imperial standards?”

  He had a point. The thing that worried him, though, was that none of the signs were written in a language they understood. Lines in blue and green paint ran along the ceiling, but the labels beneath the arrows were written in a blocky script that was completely indecipherable. They didn’t seem like hazard signs, but it was difficult to know for sure.

  “Let’s follow the rimside corridor a ways,” said Aaron.

  “All right. So long as we stick together.”

  “Why? Are you scared?”

  Isaac didn’t answer.

  They followed the corridor almost a hundred meters, until the airlock was lost behind the upward-curving ceiling. The same repeating pattern of docking nodes, computer terminals, and other spaceport fixtures repeated itself with little variation, everything covered in a thin layer of fine dust. Wherever there was condensation or water leakage, nasty patches of mold had taken root. Very few of the ventilator fans were still working.

  “It seems a bit like home, doesn’t it?” said Aaron, breaking the eerie stillness of the place. “I mean, aside from … well, you know.”

  “This isn’t Megiddo Station.”

  “I know that, but you’ve got to admit—I mean, the design is pretty similar.”

  Isaac said nothing, preferring to continue their investigations in silence. Aaron didn’t press him.

  They found the first body a short while later. It had decayed so much, with the skin stretched tight across the dry old bones, that it almost looked like a bag of discarded waste. Only when they came up to it did the human form become apparent.

  “Stars of Earth,” Aaron swore, jumping back. “What is that?”

  Isaac crouched and gripped one of the curled up arms as gently as he could with his oversized gloves. The suit did not transmit the sensation of touch, but the blackened skin peeled off like dry paper, the bone snapping off at the elbow joint. In the eerie silence of the station, the crack of the broken bone sounded surprisingly distinct through the external mike.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Investigating,” Isaac said softly as he laid the bone back in place. The body was curled up in a fetal position, with stringy black hair still hanging from the scalp. It was roughly adult-sized, with the gaunt remains of facial muscles pulled back from two rows of worn, flat teeth. Strangely, there was no sign of clothing—perhaps the colonists had preferred organic fibers over synthetics. Either way, the only indication of the body’s sex was in its bone structure, and Isaac didn’t know enough about that to tell whether it had been a man or a woman.

  “Stars, Isaac. Step away from that thing.”

  That “thing” used to be a person, Isaac nearly said. Instead, he stood up.

  “I can’t tell how long it’s been since he died, but clearly, it’s been a while. Years, at least.”

  “At least,” Aaron agreed. “Stars, it gives me the creeps.”

  “What I don’t understand is why he’d come down here to die, instead of finding a nice quiet place further up on the station. Maybe he was killed by an acute outbreak of disease? Either way, we should definitely sterilize these EVA suits.”

  “Yeah. It was a good idea to wear them.”

  But still dumb to board this station in the first place, Isaac thought as he continued down the corridor. Honestly, what had Aaron expected to find? This station was a tomb—the radio silence was testament enough to that. He felt as if he were walking on the bottom of an alien world-ocean surrounded in the darkness by ancient ghostly creatures no man had ever seen. Even though the station seemed quiet, it was far from empty.

  They found several more bodies clustered around one of the airlocks at a nearby docking node. A single arm with splayed-out fingers ran up against the door. At least half of the dead had been children.

  “Damn,” said Aaron. “I’m glad we didn’t dock at this airlock.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think they were trying to do?”

  Isaac shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “We should go to the upper levels and see what we can find.”

  No, we should go back to the Medea and leave this place.

  He sighed heavily and shook his head. “Haven’t you seen enough already? Everyone is dead—that much is abundantly clear. We can refuel the ship from the external tanks, so there’s no need to investigate any further.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you want to find out what happened to these people? Maybe if we go up, we’ll find some sort of—”

  “No.”

  Even through the copper-tinted faceplate, Isaac could see his brother’s scowl.

  “Come on! Why are you always the one who gets to decide?”

  “Because I’m the oldest.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Isaac didn’t answer. Now was not the time
to get into another argument about who was in charge and whether Aaron could take care of himself. Stars knew they fought about that enough already.

  Aaron took a deep, raspy-sounding breath. “Well, fine. You do what you want down here. I’m going to go check out the upper levels.”

  “What? Hey, stop!”

  But Isaac was too late. His brother was already heading toward one of the narrow stairwells leading to the upper decks of the station.

  “What the hell are you doing? You come back right now!”

  “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “Dammit, Aaron! We’re supposed to stick together!”

  “You’re welcome to follow along.”

  Isaac took a deep breath and clenched his fists. “Aaron, please. Think about what you’re doing. This station isn’t safe. We should go back to the ship and get ready to leave.”

  “You’re not going to stop me, Isaac. I’m going.”

  Isaac’s skin crawled and his stomach flipped as he looked down both ends of the empty corridor. One of the broken display screens flickered in the distance, reminding him of the lightning storm on the cloud-covered world below. With the colonists’ decaying bodies all around him, the place was filled with death.

  But he was not going to abandon his brother.

  “Wait up, you idiot. I’m coming.”

  * * * * *

  Aaron was waiting for him at the top of the stairwell. It was slow going in the heavy EVA suit, but he managed the climb without losing his breath for more than a few seconds.

  “Well, here we are,” Isaac said as he cleared the final step. “Where to next?”

  Aaron paused, unsure where to go. The lights were even dimmer here, the corridor much narrower. A number of doors branched off on either side, but most of them were closed and the electronics were clearly failing.

  “I don’t know. The Station Master’s offices, I guess.”

  “Any idea which way?”

  “Let’s just go,” said Aaron. The scowl in his voice was audible.

  They set off down the windowless corridor, headlights illuminating the way. Flecks of dust suspended in the air lit up as they walked by, only for their passage to wrench them back into the darkness. With the closeness of the walls, though, Isaac felt a little more at ease.

  Aaron was right—this place looked a lot like their home station back in Delta Oriana. He almost expected to see icons on the lintels of the doors they passed, or catch the smell of incense wafting from one of the local deck churches. Megiddo Station hadn’t been much bigger than Alnilam Station. The Oriana Star Cluster was still squarely in the Outworlds, but it was settled thickly enough that none of the settlements were completely isolated.

  Not that that had saved the ones who had stayed behind.

  “I wonder what those arrows on the ceiling mean,” Aaron mused. “The green ones go back to the stairs, but the blue ones seem to lead somewhere else.”

  Isaac shrugged. “So long as we don’t get lost.” Since the station was small enough that they could walk the whole length of the rimside corridor in less than an hour, there wasn’t much danger of that. Probably.

  The corridor came to an end at a maintenance closet. The door was open, giving them a view of the equipment lockers and control panels for the station-wide systems. Surprisingly, the computer terminal seemed to be in pretty good shape.

  “Perhaps we can access the station records from here,” Isaac said. He stepped inside, checking quickly to see if there were any dead or decomposing bodies. Satisfied that there weren’t, he sat down at the terminal and activated it. The screen came to life, displaying what appeared to be some sort of boot cycle.

  “I’ll take a quick look around some of these other rooms,” Aaron said. “If this place is anything like Megiddo Station, the station master’s office shouldn’t be far.”

  Isaac hesitated, the dusty darkness of the maintenance room suddenly much more ominous. The external mike buzzed—probably from the ventilation shaft out in the corridor—but it could just as easily have been from something less innocuous.

  “We’ve got to stick together, Aaron. No wandering off.”

  “I know, but—look, I’ll stay in range of the suit-to-suit radios and talk with you just to let you know what I’m doing. Is that all right?”

  Isaac bit his lip. The computer finished booting and showed a startup menu. The prompt was obviously for languages, since one of the labels was in Gaian.

  “All right. I’ll stay here, but be sure to tell me where you’re going and what you see.”

  “Okay,” said Aaron. He patted him on the arm and left.

  Language: Gaian, Isaac selected on the startup screen. Out in the corridor, the sound of his brother’s heavy footsteps grew softer, mingling with the buzz of the ambient noise from the few working ventilators.

  “I’m turning a corner,” said Aaron, his voice as clear as if he were standing just a few feet away. “If this is like Megiddo, then—yep, the corridor continues on the other side of this maintenance room. Following the blue arrows. Passing one door, two doors …”

  The display screen flickered, then showed a new menu with dozens of option sets. Most of them had labels like SECURITY DECK 2A and brought up a password field when Isaac tried to select them. At the top, though, he found an icon labeled PUBLIC ACCESS. He selected it, and a new menu opened up, this one not unlike the main screen on the Medea.

  “… four doors. Arrows end here. It looks like someone left it open. Stepping inside …”

  Isaac scrolled down to where the ship’s log would usually be. Of course, there wasn’t one for the station, but there was a document file labeled TO WHOEVER COMES. He selected it.

  “… It’s the station master’s office, all right. There’s an official looking desk with its own terminal and dual displays. There’s a wallscreen, too, but it’s dead, with a crack down the center.”

  To whoever comes, the document read. I am write this station master Nova Alnilam. Datestamp 1.8.1192, New Pleiades reckoning. We are very tsavadet, food medical supplies are tvilo adamansvi since two year, no can we contact outside star …

  Damn Outworld language databases, Isaac thought to himself. Obviously, the document had been written in the colonist’s native language and translated to Gaian by an outdated translation algorithm. Either this colony had been isolated for a lot longer than anyone had realized, or the writer had been in too much of a hurry to do a proper job.

  “Looks like there’s a side room. Door is open, just like the main one. There’s a lot more dust here for some reason, not sure why. Stepping inside right now, and—holy shit!”

  Isaac’s blood ran cold.

  “Aaron? Aaron, what do you see?”

  “You’ve got to come see this, Isaac. You’ve got to come right now.”

  Isaac leaped to his feet and hurried out the door as fast as his heavy EVA suit would allow.

  * * * * *

  “I’m here,” Isaac said, painting as he stepped into the station master’s office.

  “This way,” said Aaron, waving him urgently into a side room. Isaac entered the doorway and froze.

  A mostly decayed body lay curled up beside a small cylindrical storage tank in the middle of the floor. The body itself wasn’t much different from any of the others, but the tank was something else entirely. It was built like a coffin, with the upward-facing part made almost entirely of glass. And inside of that glass was the perfectly preserved body of a beautiful young woman.

  Chills ran down the back of Isaac’s neck as he stared at her. In this mausoleum of a station, she stood out like a jewel. She was a little shorter than Aaron and probably not much older, with long black hair and dark brown skin. Her face was round, with sharp eyebrows, a flat nose, and full lips. As with anyone under cryo, she was naked, though her skin was covered in henna tattoos that made her appear otherwise. The dark brown ink seemed to form a set of intricate parallel fractals, reflected across an axis that ran down the cente
r of her body. The fine attention to detail was almost religious in its precision.

  “She’s gorgeous,” said Aaron. “Have you ever seen anything like her?”

  “No,” Isaac admitted. He ran his gloved fingers over the glass. The henna designs accentuated the natural curves of her body, emphasizing every feature while imbuing her with a sense of poise and dignity. Instead of feeling like a voyeur, Isaac felt as if he stood before a shrine.

  “Do you think she’s still alive?”

  “If she is, she’s obviously in cryo. I don’t see any controls, though, so I’m not sure how we’d go about waking her.”

  “Wake her? Stars of Earth—you think we really can?”

  Why else would they have put her in stasis? No doubt whoever had frozen her had hoped to save the girl’s life. Since the cryotank was tucked away in a closet, she was probably the only survivor. Clearly, someone had kept the existence of the cryotank a secret right to the very end.

  He took a moment to examine the cryotank itself. The metal casing was discolored in places, the welds and soldering surprisingly crude. It had no external controls, and the systems seemed too crude to be designed for thawing as well as freezing. It was obvious that the tank had been constructed by hand.

  “What do you think?” said Aaron, breaking the silence that had inadvertently fallen between them.

  “The design for the cryotank is crude. I don’t think we can thaw her with any of the equipment here.”

  “We’ve got to take her with us, then, and find someone who can.”

  Isaac frowned. Something about that idea made his stomach turn.

  “We’ve already gone further here than we ever should have. Besides, for all we know, she’s already dead.”

  “Dead? What are you talking about, man? If there’s even a chance that she’s alive, we should do all we can to save her.”

  He’s right, Isaac thought to himself. Still, something held him back: a sense of foreboding that screamed at him to go back to the Medea and forget that they’d ever come to this place.