There was a loud metallic groan and a violent shudder shaking the hull for a second or so when Kass hit the asteroid. The impact rocked her sideways, her shoulder banging into the hard-plast casing. She ignored the pain. Her hands raced over the control panel, flicking on two switches – one to extend the clamp-arms, the other firing up ‘suction cups’ on the tips of the clamps – then throttled the right-side lever to maximum thrust, driving the titan-steel tip of her small spacecraft’s drill into the asteroid’s surface. Only five meters from her seat, the rock splintered, came apart, slowly, pelting the cockpit viewport with space rock debris veiled in thick smoke and dust.
“Warning,” called a cracked synthetic voice from age-worn speakers. “Warn-“
The faint yellow tubes lining the inside of her craft died, replaced with a pulsing red light. On her dashboard, words hovered over the controls, impossible to ignore: POWER FAILURE. The pod tumbled as if in free-fall, stars and distant planet-bodies outside the viewport reduced to stripes of blurred lines. Kass closed her eyes to fight the vomit building in her stomach, working the rest of the landing in darkness. A deep resounding thunk told her the pod was secured. Next, turn the drill off, wait for the power to kick back in, she thought, counting seconds. 3… 2… 1… there.
She powered on the gyroscopic functions, and the pod’s rotations slowed, lining up with the target. When she opened her eyes, all she saw was the asteroid’s craggy brown-gray surface.
To an outsider, her descent was a controlled collision, an almost-accident, removed from any standard docking procedures. She was alive because of luck alone. She wanted to say it was all maths, all calculations and skill. That wasn’t entirely true. There was an art to it she couldn’t explain or teach. In a place where no one really believed in the concept of art, she kept that opinion to herself, if only to avoid certain ridicule.
The dashboard returned to a comfortable faint blue, and the warning bells (or at least the critical ones, the ones she didn’t ignore) vanished. Kass slumped backwards and let the rush recede, feeling her heart settle to a steady rhythm. She noticed now a faint clicking sound an insect might make, coming from the right of her limited vicinity. For all she knew, it might as well have been there since she started the landing, fighting a losing battle for her attention against the alarms.
She clicked a red-lit button on the control panel. For a moment, she savoured the silence, only broken by the steady hum of machinery. On this job, it was the best you could hope for.
Static replaced the silence. Through the static, a voice emerged. “Donsen here. What’s the weather like, Kass?” His voice came out slowly in a monotone drawl. She had, on multiple occasions, entertained the thought that he was an AI in disguise.
“About to run the scanners,” Kass said, her fingers zig-zagging over the keyboard in front of her. “Alright, what are we looking at?” she muttered. A few seconds later, a long string of numbers appeared on the screen. It was old tech for sure, not quite like the more advanced Terran tech that translated the raw data to a more convenient, easy-to-read format. But language was just another form of pattern, just like this one, and it took her only a moment to locate relevant information.
“Humm. Iron, yep. A hail of iron.” She sighed, leaned her head on her palm, clicking her fingernails against the metal of the dashboard, waiting for the rest of the numbers to trickle in. “Some nickel, cobalt. Trace of gold. What’s the going rate for gold these days?”
There was a pause before Donsen returned. The background noise was a blend of static nothing and the thrum of heavy machinery in motion. Out here in the dead of space, it may as well have been what passed for music.
“Don’t get your hopes up. Collectors and artists want them, I suppose. Jewellery makers, that sort of crowd, back at Central. Rare demand and not a whole lot of pay for the effort, but it’s there.”
“Okay,” she said, yawning, rubbing her sore shoulder. “How’s your end?”
“Let’s just say drinks are on you tonight.”
Kass grinned. “Again? One of these days we should start keeping a tally. Hell, we should have a long time ago.”
“So long as we don’t play, I don’t lose. You know I can’t stand losing. Anyway, I just wanted to check in. Gotta cut the chatter before Central starts complaining. How much you got left?”
“Scanner’s showing another rock nearby following the same trajectory. I’ll give that one a poke, then call it a day.”
“Let me know when you wrap up and we’ll race home.”
“And here I thought you didn’t enjoy losing. Silly me.”
“So long as we don’t keep tally, it doesn’t count. Later, Starshine.”
The feed cut, and the static faded. She waited until the alarms returned before switching on the drill program, watching as the rocks came loose, as multiple tiny arms reached out for the debris, sorting them, picking out chunks of valuable minerals, putting them in the storage compartment on the craft’s back (and the storage was conveniently of see-through material, allowing her a mostly 360 degree view of her surroundings). She could have manually steered every part of the process, but what was the point? There was no thrill, no fun. No danger. Besides, she couldn’t really do a better job than the computer controlling so many aspects at once.
Instead, she sat back, and waited, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, with half a mind to ring up Donsen again – protocols be damned. Whoever wrote the rules never had to be subject to lonesome hours of boredom, trapped in a glorified hamster ball, always having to be alert in case of a burst fuel line, or excessive humidity build-up, or calculation errors, or a hundred other things went wrong. With archaic tech like this, you were considered lucky to have it run at all.
Kass punched in another command, and the cockpit ball slowly started rotating. The rock disappeared from in front of her, then the space station she called home crawled into view, a black splotch against the maroon gas giant it circled. Beyond that, miles away: Central – an even greater station, where people could enjoy life in relative comfort. At least relative to here. The ball swivelled past the outpost she called home and then there was only space, the main draw of the few crazy people volunteering to mine rocks on the edge of the known universe. Come for the solitude, stay because you’ll probably die on the job. From here, you could reach uncharted space within a month or two, even with the tech they had on hand. Who knows what lurked out there? Just more space, she reckoned. More than once, she had wrestled with the idea of taking off, see how far she got before either running out of gas or plunging head-first into a previously undiscovered planet. Dying of old age wouldn’t happen. At least it beat going back to Earth.
The ball completed its circle, came back to the floating rock she was stuck to. She shook the adventurous thoughts out of her head and instead nodded her head from point to point, looking at every single button, knob, lever, screen…
Kass sat up, leaned closer. The local radar screen tracing minerals in her sector showed only one dot, straight on top of her current location. The other one had vanished. Her cue to call up Donsen.
His reply was immediate. “Done already?”
“Actually, I need you to check something for me. What’s popping up on the sector five scanner?”
“Hold on.” A pause. “I see two overlapping entities and nothing else. Hm. You said you had two jobs?”
“I did. The second one is gone.”
“Odd. That- “
“Wait,” said Kass. “It’s back. You see it?”
Surely enough, there it was, same place it had been before disappearing: squashed against the top right corner of the square field marked as sector five. A bright green line spread from its core, an indication of its trajectory. Had something changed? Then it was gone again.
“Nothing on my screens, Kass.”
“Hold on,” she said, leaving the comms open. She half-rose out of her chair, crouching as not to bump her head against the ceiling, pulled out overhead drawers, emptied them on the floor. She leafed through the contents. Laminated safety cards, backup batteries, pliers, a couple wrenches… where was plain damn paper?
Then she found the stained, yellow instruction manual, creased and crumpled under her feet, sandwiched between two empty cans of oil.
Kass ripped a page out of the manual, put the paper over the digital display, grabbed a marker from a holster on the wall. The second dot was back, and she managed to trace the trajectory line just before it vanished. She repeated the process again, drew a second line, then a third, a fourth. She held the paper up in front of her, a paper with four distinct lines in place of what should only have been one.
“The trajectory changes,” said Kass. “It’s incremental. Barely noticeable. How is that possible?”
“Must be a glitch,” said Donsen, his voice as dull as ever. If this mystery could not move him, then what could? “Whatever you’re seeing, I reckon it’s not even there. Outside interference, messing with the tech. If anything, you need your ship checked out. I’ll have Central send out a technician.”
“You’re doing nothing until I can check it out,” Kass said. “I’m detaching. I can wrap this up later.”
Interrupting the drill sequence was simply the press of a few keys. “Warning, aborting could lead to-“ said the machine, before being abruptly silenced. Yeah, yeah, I got it. That’s enough.
“Gotta get eyes on this anomaly in case it disappears,” she said.
“Stop it, Kass.” His voice was harder now, his words coming out faster. “You don’t know what you’re doing. The anomaly could be an approximate location of an asteroid. You won’t see it until you’re on top of it.”
“Drill sequence aborted.”
A hiss, another assault of steam, and she was free. The scattered few minerals she had not picked up bumped against the viewport. She slowed, banked right, towards the solar system’s central star.
“Then I guess you’re paying for drinks tonight after all.” It was meant to be a joke, or half a joke, but she couldn’t help but slip an edge into her tone. She clicked the comms off before she was left with even more words to regret. The insect-like clicking started only seconds later. She ignored it.
The flickering blip remained in the north-east corner. Another mystery: why hadn’t it moved? She didn’t want to consider the options, lest possible logical explanations discouraged her.
Kass adjusted her axis to line with the object, diverted power to the Rapid Displacement Drive, and disappeared from her spot. Two seconds later, she reappeared on the edge of sector five, hundreds of miles away.
The two dots on the scanner – herself and the anomaly – was almost on top of one another. She peered out of the viewport, saw only the endless dark, broken by spatters of white, and the centre sun, blinding her if not for the filter that came standard even on these crafts. The asteroid belt was nearby, though out of sight, marking the end of most mining sectors. Disappointingly, nothing was out of place.
Another blip on the radar, approaching fast. Unlike the anomaly, this one had an ID tag attached to it. She finally answered the insect call.
“After me so soon?” she said.
A rain of static, Donsen’s voice barely breaking through. “Damn it, Kass.” His voice was a low growl. “There’s only so much of your insubordination Central is willing to bypass. Let’s go home so I can smooth things over with them, hopefully.”
“I’m not done here!”
“You’ve burned most your tank, Kass. I have to reel you back in.”
Damned! The man was right: the fuel was almost depleted. How had she not heard the alarm going off? She barely had enough to dodge space debris. She’d have to rely on Donsen if she wanted home at all.
“No apology, then? Alright, fine. Just shine your light so I can zero in on your position.”
Kass’s fist hit the control panel. Her breath came out in short bursts, her mind racing through a dozen scenarios where she outran him, scurried off somewhere, and then… what? He'd be home, waiting. Don’t go home, then. Hide in Central for a while, wouldn’t be the first time. At least he’d know not to worry. But that wasn’t satisfactory, either; she feared she wanted him to worry.
“Kass, you listening?”
Her breathing slowed, then smoothed out, and she drew a long breath at the end, as if to admit defeat. That was the only apology the man could expect, and the only one he deserved. He was close now, perhaps just under her, but wouldn’t approach unless she flipped the lights on, in case of collision.
“Kass?”
She brought her head down to the control panel, right next to the flood lights switch, fingered the little metallic stick. It was so close to the RDD switch, so similar as well. Wouldn’t be far-fetched for someone to, say, accidentally flip the wrong one. That was totally understandable, right?
A jump would normally slow on exit, but not if you ran dry mid-jump. You’d carry on with a slower momentum, but momentum nonetheless. She could probably turn off the tracker as well, just drift… for a while.
And then what?
“Starshine?”
“Fuck,” she whispered, poking at the flood lights switch until it clicked into place.
A glint of metal. That was the first thing she saw as the light painted the object into existence. It floated in front of her, slightly above, so that the cone of light fell on the corner, where it ended. Just another piece of debris, she thought, until she realised the polished light-grey surface and sharp angles were deliberately shaped. A human construct.
Another cone of light joined hers. At her side, a craft much like hers slid into view, though Donsen’s vehicle did not have the same marks of damage that hers did. He liked to remind her of that, sometimes. Not always jokingly.
“You see what I’m seeing?” she said.
“Yeah,” said Donsen.
She tilted her craft upwards, traced the metal until it vanished into darkness, the construct running upwards and leftwards for who knows how far. Aluminium sheets, she reckoned, each one a different shade of grey, lined with double rows of titanium bolts. Deep welding scars separating each plate ran in a chaotic pattern, as if the thing had been deconstructed, taken apart, and clumsily put together by someone with only a passing knowledge of its intended design.
“Follow me,” said Kass, banking to the left, and pulling back a bit to get a better perspective. Wordlessly, Donsen’s craft trailed hers.
Even at the extreme of the light’s reach, even as the two crafts spaced out to cover more ground, the construct never seemed to end. Might as well stretch out to touch either end of the universe for all she knew. At least it ran for several kilometres, maybe dozens of miles. And it was all featureless, save for rows of dead diodes - most likely serving as proximity lights - lining the construct’s hull.
Something else slid into view: a twelve-digit number, stamped on with white ink. She recognised the sequence, as even her craft had one, too. All ships did.
“It’s a spaceship,” she said. “A huge fucking spaceship. Never seen any this size.”
“Explains the glitch on your computer,” said Donsen. “It’s actively masking itself.”
“And why its trajectory kept changing.”
“Hmm.” Rapid clicking and computing noises. “That’s what I thought. There’s no power signature. The thing’s running minimal power, so low I can’t even detect it. Or perhaps that’s masked, too.”
“You pinged them?”
“Can’t get through, or if I do, I’m not getting any response. Not even an automatic response. It’s all dark.”
“What about Central? Do they know of any ships scheduled for a jump all the way out here?”
“Already tried. Central is dark, too. We must be inside some kind of interference field. Besides, what would they be doing out here?”
“Beats me. Pleasure cruise? Some rich guy’s yacht? Don’t know what’s going on over on Earth anymore.” Then again, I don’t think I ever did. “Question is, how’d they even get here? Coordinates are highly restricted. A blind jump?”
They came upon an indent in the structure, a viable way inside through an opening large enough to fit crafts ten times the size of their own. Kass dared closer, peeking inside, found it mostly empty. Large steel crates: some floating, some strapped down with rope and metal hooks, but pulling at their tight restraints, casting long shadows against the walls. Heavy-duty machinery on the ground. A catwalk, lining the back wall from end to end. And on the wall to her right, barely visible, text painted in large letters: HANGAR BAY 02.
“It’s a docking bay,” said Kass. “We could get inside here.”
“Power readings are all over the place,” said Donsen. “Something’s happening.”
The lights inside the hangar flashed on, row by row, until the entire place was lit up. The hangar remained dead and empty.
“Kind of expected a warmer welcome than this,” she said, switching off her flood lights. “Where’s the gravity? We can’t dock like this.”
“Signal’s still getting stronger, but the field is disturbing my instruments. I can’t get an accurate read, pin-point the source. We have to wait and see what happens.”
“Hold on,” said Kass, angling right, towards the end wall. “I think there’s a manual switch somewhere, for emergency grav power.” She tapped the floating crates lightly with the arms of her craft, and they changed course, as if they were made of air. One such crate came dangerously close to her viewport, and she caught a glance at a printed label, plastered onto its side. Wholly uninteresting stuff. A requisition order for this and that, signed by a name she could not make out.
It was as if an icy grip closed around her spine, even before she saw what was underneath the signature: an insignia of a globe framed by a laurel wreath, a symbol of pride, of faded dark red colour.
“Shit. Donsen, it’s a goddamn Terran fleet ship!”
Kass turned, sped out of the hangar bay, found Donsen’s craft lurking outside.
“You have to jump us out of here right now.”
“Why, what’s wrong? You don’t think-“
External activity cut him off. In an instant, the ship flared to life, its hundred – thousands? – hull lights like an army of angry, red eyes.
“Gotta be an AI at the helm,” said Kass. “Functional or not, it thinks we’re a threat.” Radioing a friendly handshake did nothing. She double checked her own Interspace Friend-or-Foe Signal, checked Donsen’s as well. They were in the clear. Surely a ship this size would have an advanced AI, one who could distinguish threat from ally?
“Damnit. We’re friendly, you bastard. Read our IFFS signatures!”
She tried to make sense of the massive ship’s power readings, but got a jumbled mess as well, but the more she looked, the more stable it became. A chart of the ship’s estimated outline painted itself on screen. Big, red circles at the hull, but only on their side. Fuck. “Power is centralising. It’s powering up cannons! We have to get out – now.”
Donsen’s craft approached hers, placed itself on top. “Hold tight, I’m connecting us.” Grinding, some light shaking. Then a short-lived synthetic tone to let her know a connection was established.
Outside, the hull of the bigger ship revealed its weaponry. Laser turrets, as big as smaller space-faring vessels, protruded from now-open slots in the metal sheets. They came equipped with blinding lights pointed upwards, illuminating the whole thing, as if to say, ‘consider your odds before engaging’.
Was it just a threat, then? She didn’t want to take that risk.
“Now’s a good time, Donsen.”
Heavy grunting from the man’s end, frustrated clacking, muttering. The turret nearest to them, only a few paces from the hangar opening, rotated, slowly, towards them.
“Hey, Donsen?”
“I… can’t. The interference is messing up the RDD. It’s not responding at all. I can’t even get a distress call out to Central.”
Movement on the screen caught her eye, power surging, and a massive amount of heat. Another alarm: proximity to radiation.
“Break! Break now!”
A burst of speed, sudden momentum. She lurched forward. The turret’s blast followed soon after, a cyan-blue mass of plasma travelling at half light speed, zipping past the spot the two of them had just been.
Kass span around, found Donsen’s craft unharmed.
Another burst of heat building, powering up. They had, what, 20 seconds? 15? How far could they get in that time? Hide in the nearby asteroid belt? Even if they did make it in there, they would not survive the belt itself.
“Head for the hangar bay!” she yelled, and she sped forwards. “Before it fires again!” She couldn’t tell if his voice rang in her mind or not. Gee, I suppose I should thank you for sentencing us to death. Classic Kass, all instinct and no thought. She didn’t have time for his goddamned lectures, not now. “Do it!”
Another shot grazed her as she slipped into the hangar. Didn’t have time to check in with Donsen. She needed focus. Had to stretch out the arms, prepare to grab onto something – anything. This was likely going to hurt.
The arm of her craft reached out, and she prepared to deploy the suction cups, finger hovering over the button, counting seconds in her head.
Her ship went dark in the split of a second. She mashed the button. Nothing happened.
“Fuck!” she screamed, grabbing for her seat belt, pulling it across her chest, clicked it into place, just as the wall came to meet her.
“Donsen, I lost power! I-“
The arm splintered, bent, turned to rubble. The ship collided, leaving a dent in the back wall. A large gash ran from top to bottom of her viewport. The craft bounced off, was flung backwards. Kass tried to speak, but had her breath knocked out of her, her harness close to choking her.
She fought to collect her breath. Outside the cracked glass, the hangar opening approached fast.
Kass grabbed a helmet from underneath her seat, put it on “Suit!” she said, grabbing onto the frame of her cockpit. A compartment in the back of her helmet sprang open, and her body was quickly enveloped in a skin-tight translucent material, keeping her from harm of space, at least for a little while.
The glass shattered, sucking the rest of her emergency oxygen out.
“Eject! Now! Eje-“
There was a resounding roar, like the ship went out screaming, and then… silence, save for her own ragged breaths, loud and close. The top of her craft popped open. Her seat followed, a spring-loaded burst of speed accelerating her towards the hangar ceiling. She freed herself from the chair, bumped softly against the ceiling, grabbed onto the catwalk. The speed was manageable – finally some good luck. Beneath, she just about caught one final glimpse of her mining craft – and the debris once part of it – floating out into nothing. She could still have been in there right now, no chance to signal for help, or communicate with anyone at all. She shuddered at the thought.
Kass held a tight grip on the catwalk as she followed it alongside the ceiling’s edges until she was safely on the other side of the opening. Beneath, Donsen’s craft was ‘parked’, its grabbing hands clutched onto hard plastics and metal. At least he had been successful.
She found him near his craft, next to a door assuming to lead further into the ship, holding onto the handle of a shipping container. He waved at her frantically, the lights of his helmet bobbing rapidly. She kicked off against the catwalk and met his outstretched hand, let him pull her down. Donsen’s hand on her shoulder, squeezing tight. Half-obscured by the visor of his helmet, she still saw the worry in his eyes, saw the words he no doubt wanted – needed – to get out, but that would have to wait. They had no way of communicating past hand gestures, but they didn’t need words to figure out the next step: find some way off the Terran ship.
A simple button on the wall, still functional. The door slid backwards, clicked into a grove, disappeared sideways. They floated into a small chamber, walls lined with exposed tubes and pipes, as if stepping into a beast’s stomach. When the door shut behind them, she felt her feet grow heavy, settle on the ground. Gravity at last.
They walked through another door, on the opposite side, revealing a brightly-lit, sterile-white corridor that reminded her more of an Earth hospital than a spacecraft, especially one with guns big enough to easily wipe out Central in the matter of minutes. She’d put that fact in the back of her mind, too afraid to consider the implications of what it all meant.
The corridor turned at the end, towards the right. Donsen’s hand was still on her shoulder, squeezing hard. Kass half-turned, gave him a thumbs up, as if to say, ‘I’m way better than I seem’, but despite herself, she couldn’t stop shaking. When she turned the corner, it was with that in mind: thankful for Donsen’s support. Didn’t make it any easier that she couldn’t exactly be vocal about it.
She was too distracted. That’s why she yelped when she saw the man, blocking the path in front on them. In the moment before any action took place, Kass registered two things:
Firstly, he wore an expression she could not read. His bushy eyebrows slanted backwards, one edge of his mouth arched upwards – a smile like that of a predator. His eyes were a cold grey.
Secondly, he held a gun in one outstretched hand, pointed at her.
His voice muffled, coming from outside the thick of her helmet. Normally, two people wouldn’t hear each other if they both wore suits and didn’t communicate through comms. It wasn’t a problem in this scenario.
The man wasn’t wearing any suit at all.
“Welcome to the Tiebreaker,” he said.