Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (8 page)

“Aye aye.”

In the foggy image from Kim’s headset the wheel of
engine two’s manual fuel cut-off valve finally came into view. The wheel was
twelve inches in diameter, had six thick spokes and was painted bright red. The
red paint appeared the palest possible pink, however, covered as it was with a
thin layer of frost.

Mike saw Kim reach for the wheel. He also saw—perhaps
at the same moment she did—that its valve was wrapped in a small coil of
lightly frosted C-4. Kim stopped in mid-reach. The red light on the black
thimble was not blinking. She whispered as though the thimble might hear her.
“Captain?”

The captain whispered back, “I see it. Don’t move. Just
don’t do anything yet.” Mike knew Larry must be thinking furiously; trying to
decide what to tell her; trying to decide what he would do if he were out there
facing a bomb with no more protection than a standard vacuum suit. “Kim, the
thimble is the detonator and it’s not blinking. If you can yank it out and
throw it away from the ship the C-4 will become harmless.” Mike heard the sound
of Larry swallowing. “Do you think you can do that?”

She didn’t answer. She just reached for the thimble and
plucked it from the soft clay-like substance. But she didn’t toss it. For some
reason she brought the half-frosted object near her faceplate and examined it
closely.

“Captain,” the ship said, “I am detecting a coded
transmission.”

The captain jerked himself upright in his seat. “Throw
it!”

Six inches from Kim’s faceplate the thimble started
blinking. She squealed like a stabbed animal and threw the tiny object with a
savage forward jerk.

Forty feet from her hand and twenty feet from the ship
the thimble exploded in vacuum. So feeble was its expanding shock wave that as
it slapped across her suit it managed to knock loose fewer than a dozen flakes
of frost and to produce inside her helmet a sound no louder than a cat sneezing.
However, though its explosion was small and harmed nothing the act of throwing
it cost Kim her balance. Mike saw the image from her headset begin to shift. It
fell backward about ten feet then stopped sharply, accompanied by a loud clang.

The captain shouted, “Kim! Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Kim!”

The image contained a close-up of an engine mount’s
structural steelwork which was swollen with frost and terribly blurry because
the steel was too near the camera to be in focus. The steelwork rolled to the
left and came into sharp focus as Kim’s distance from it increased.

Two seconds later the image contained a half-frosted
engine nozzle moving sideways, rapidly.

At three seconds there was another loud clang. This
time the image from Kim’s headset disintegrated into a worthless field of
static. Ten thousand meaningless black and white specks danced randomly within
the image’s rectangular borders. The image of the captain and his bridge dome,
however, remained unaffected.

It was on the bridge dome that Mike saw, at six
seconds, all four of the aft external cameras display a white and green vacuum
suit reach the end of its tether and take a fierce and terrible jerk. A jerk so
harsh it broke the tether, started the suit tumbling and threw from the suit’s
surface thousands of chucks of frost.

Mike’s eyes filled with tears. He had difficulty making
out the details in the images on his little computer, though he continued to
try.

The chunks of frost scattered in every direction, the
suit shrank with distance and the broken tether lashed about like a whip.

The captain squeezed the ends of his padded armrests.
“Kim! Can you hear me?”

She did not answer.

The captain’s fingers began to turn white. “Give me a
sign! Try waving your arms!”

She did not wave.

Both Mike and the captain stared at the four images,
straining desperately to spot some kind of movement—anything that would
indicate she was still alive—but she only grew smaller and smaller with
distance: a limp vacuum suit tumbling silently toward the stars.

Chapter Five

Mike wiped his eyes, though not very effectively. He
tried squeezing his eyelids shut to force the tears out, then wiped them again.
This seemed to work better.

He resumed watching his computer’s little screen. In it
the captain stared trance-like at the slowly shrinking white speck which was
Kim. She was now so far away that her tumbling had become imperceptible. She
was just one of the stars in the great blackness of space.

“Captain,” the ship said, “the assistant flight
engineer is calling.”

Frank!
Mike frowned.
That idiot!

The captain blinked a few times as if to wrench his
mind free. He glanced around the bridge then looked down at his hands—still
squeezing the ends of his command chair’s armrests. He opened them and flexed
his fingers. “Good! Put him through.”

A new image appeared on the dome. It contained the head
and shoulders of a thin, middle-aged man wearing a loose and wrinkled shirt.
His uncombed brown hair stuck out in several obviously unintended directions
and the tip of his long narrow nose was red.

This last fact sparked no curiosity in Mike. He knew
that, for Frank, this was normal. The tip of the man’s nose was covered with a
random pattern of fine red lines: capillaries permanently dilated by years of
accumulated chemical use—liquor mostly, but also caffeine and nicotine pills.

The man rubbed his eyes. “Captain, what’s going on? I
just slid out of my tube-hammock and banged my head on the ceiling.”

“Frank, shut-up and listen! Kim’s snapped her tether.
She’s been thrown from the ship and I think she’s unconscious. Or maybe her
radio’s failed. I didn’t see any leaks from her suit, but I can’t be sure there
aren’t any. Get her coordinates and velocity vectors from the ship and go out
after her. Scramble, man! Scramble!”

“Aye, Captain. I’m on my way!” As the man turned to go
his image disappeared from the dome.

Mike heard an echoing noise somewhere behind him and
glanced quickly around the hangar deck but Tina was the only person he saw. He
squinted slightly.
Shouldn’t the others be here by now?
But he shoved
the thought aside and looked back down at his pocketsize.

The ship was advising the captain that he should get
out of his seat and drop to the ceiling. The captain argued against this idea
but finally realized he had no safer choice. The captain struggled with his
seat belt. “I can’t get it open!”

The ship asked, “Do you have a knife?”

“You know damn well I don’t have a— Aaaaah!”

The captain fell straight up from his command chair and
crashed into the domed ceiling. He landed on his side with a hideous
whiplash-like motion. His legs hit first, then his hip, arm, shoulder and head.
Mike grimaced at the sight. There was no way a human being could land like that
without breaking bones. Lots of bones.

“Captain,” the ship said, “what is your condition?”

The captain did not answer.

The ship asked again.

Again, the captain did not answer.

The noises echoing within the cargo deck grew louder.

Mike looked up from his pocketsize as the door on the
more distant of the two vertical hallways swung open and two people in mid
conversation stepped out one after another. They were too far away for Mike to
distinguish what they were saying but close enough that he could tell by their
inflection that the conversation consisted mostly of questions and no answers.

First out was a short stocky man named Gideon Yehoshua:
a fusion engineer who Mike secretly thought resembled a dwarf from Tolkien’s
Middle Earth. Having spent a good bit of time with Gideon during this flight,
Mike had developed a private respect for him similar to his respect for Larry,
though not nearly as deep. He’d even given up his original impression that the
fifty-six year old Israeli citizen was fat. He certainly didn’t move as one
might expect a fat man to move: instead of plodding or lumbering, he was quick
and smooth and graceful.

Gideon’s hair was gray and thinning, though he was
still a long way from being bald. He wore khaki pants and a matching safari
shirt with two large breast pockets. His blue eyes were clear and sharp and
seemed to miss few details, and his large thick hands moved expressively as he
spoke—which at the moment was to the person following along behind him.

That person was Akio Yamaguchi: a thirty-two year old
computer engineer and the one person aboard ship that Mike was actually aware
that he did not understand. It wasn’t that Mike had anything against him, it
was just that it always felt like a struggle trying to hold a conversation with
the guy. Akio was everything Gideon was not: pale, thin, soft, almost fragile
looking. More than just quiet, he was inhibited to the point of being timid.
Gideon seemed to be the only person aboard capable of drawing the young man
out.

His choice of clothing only intensified Mike’s
confusion and discomfort when around him. To say his outfits were not work
clothes was insufficient. They seemed tailored specifically to prevent the
wearer from even considering any task that resembled actual work. At the
moment, for example, he wore a yellow sweater-vest over a long-sleeved white
shirt with beige pants, beige socks and beige shoes.

“Mike!” Gideon yelled as he walked toward him. “The
captain told us to meet you here. Why is the ship spinning so?”

Akio followed Gideon over black electrical cables, blue
ventilation ducts and white plastic junction boxes as though imitating a
nervous puppy—uneasy about the danger of each obstacle and forever unsure of
what he should do next.

Mike lifted his pocketsize close to his mouth and
whispered, “Is there anything else I need to see?”

“You have seen all that the captain wanted,” the ship
said.

“Good.” Mike lowered the pocketsize and raised his head
and voice to the newcomers. “We’ve got a fuel leak.” He started walking to meet
them half-way. “It’s spraying out sideways from the engines.”

The three stood in a small triangle. Mike and Gideon
talked while Akio listened attentively—and occasionally glanced to the side at
Tina who was still sitting, still filing and still ignoring them all,
seductively.

Mike’s attention was drawn to the other vertical
hallway: the one through which he and Tina had entered. Its door was opening
with an odd slowness. When it stopped moving a narrow-faced man with thick dark
hair and an even thicker mustache peeked silently into deck ten. His restless
hands crept uselessly up and down the door’s edge as his dark brown eyes
studied nervously those already gathered at the ship’s center.

Recognizing him, Mike relaxed somewhat. It was the
electrical engineer: Zahid Mohammed Kaseem. Weeks ago Mike had pegged him as a
caffeine junkie; an already nervous man prone to too many cups of coffee.

A female voice, strict and brisk, echoed from Zahid’s
vertical hallway. “Excuse me!” the voice said. This was followed immediately by
the sound of someone bumping their head against a door. “If you aren’t going
through that door at least get out of the way and let others pass.”

Zahid—one hand pressed to his forehead—stepped out into
deck ten and moved aside for a tall attractive woman with bright red hair
dressed entirely in black. Her pants and high-collared tunic were both of black
velvet and around her waist she wore a thick black leather belt. This was
Nikita Petrov: a design engineer. Even in low gravity the Russian-born American
citizen walked stiffly upright. The bouncing of her long red hair the only
thing about her that was loose and uninhibited.

Gideon once told Mike that
Nikita
meant
Victor
in Russian, but also pointed out that it was a man’s name. Her real name might
be Nikolena, he suggested, but her pride may have required that she present
herself to the world with a name as strong as she felt herself to be.

“What is wrong with the ship?” Nikita demanded as she
strode into the group. “Why is it tumbling? The captain refused to explain.”

Mike began telling her about the leak, and filling in
details for Gideon and Akio. Zahid seemed reluctant to join them. He remained
near the door to the vertical hallway. When Mike finished, Gideon called to him
and the thin mustachioed man finally approached the edge of the group.

“But where is Valentina?” Nikita asked. “She should be
here by now.”

Mike opened his mouth to answer but hesitated: not sure
what to say or, more importantly, what to leave out.

“She is not coming,” said a voice filled with
fatalistic doom. Everyone turned and looked at Zahid. “She’s dead,” he added.
“Murdered!”

“How did you know that?” Mike asked, in a tone that
made it more accusation than question.

“I stopped by medical on my way here.” All the emotion
drained from his voice. He spoke as if he were lost in a trance. “Her body was
open. The machine was working inside her.” The Libyan’s dark skin began to
pale. “It was taking her apart, piece-by-piece. Some kind of autopsy.”

“How did she die?” Nikita asked.

“I do not know.” Zahid shook his head mournfully. “The
medsys refused to tell me. It ordered me out.”

“Then how do you know she was murdered?” she asked.

“I can feel it.” He looked at each person’s face and
waved his twitching hands as he spoke. “Can’t you feel the evil that surrounds
us? Can’t you feel the death that permeates even the air we breathe?”

Akio screamed high and loud and fell over backward. He
lay terror-stricken, pointing up at the floor above their heads. Everyone
looked up. It was the poem.

Gideon gasped as he read it. Zahid covered his mouth
with both hands. Mike didn’t know what to do; he just stood there uncertain and
helpless. Should he tell them the truth about Val’s death or hide it for fear
he would anger the murderer and force him or her to kill them all. Or worse:
what if everyone learned that he himself was the prime suspect?

Nikita put her fists on her hips with her elbows
jutting out to the sides. “Get hold of yourselves!” she commanded. “You are all
overreacting!”

Tina laughed. She pointed at them all and laughed until
her body rocked from side-to-side. The ventilation duct she was perched upon
creaked in time with her shifting weight.

The door on the nearer of the two vertical hallways
swung open and slammed against its little wall. The sound echoed harshly in the
cargo-less cargo deck. Everyone spun around to look. Everyone, that is, except
Tina who was still laughing and Akio who had fainted where he lay.

Frank Walters, wearing his sky-blue flight uniform,
stepped through the door while yelling at a brown pocketsize he held just six
inches in front of his red-tipped nose. “Don’t tell me it’s impossible! I don’t
want to hear it! There’s got to be a way to stop the rotation. Just figure out
what it is and call me!” He slapped the pocketsize shut and mumbled something
that sounded like: “Stupid pirate ship,” but was probably something
considerably worse.

He pointed a skinny index finger at Mike. “Don’t mess
with me, McCormack. I’m in charge now and I’m not going to put up with any of
your lip. It was your stupid girlfriend that got us into this jam and now I’m
gonna have to get us out.”

Mike’s fingers curled into fists. “You gonna rescue us
just like you rescued her?”

“If you’re such a hero why don’t
you
go out
after her?”

“You know I don’t know how to pilot a pod.”

“You don’t know how to do anything, McCormack. You’re
just a stupid welder.”

Mike leaned forward preparing to take a swing at that
red nose but stopped when he remembered the source of the man’s animosity.
“Frank, it was thirteen years ago! How long you gonna stay mad about that
weld?”

“There was nothing wrong with it!”

“It was crap.”

“It was good enough!”

Mike shook his head. “It was in a
structural
member. Specs for structural are higher. You didn’t meet the specs, so it was
crap.”

Again, Frank pointed a finger at Mike. “You were the
only inspector that said anything about it, and the only reason you didn’t pass
it was because you had it in for me. It’s your fault I lost my welding
certification.”

“If you hadn’t made so much noise it would have blown
over. A month later you could have recertified. You might still be working in
the shipyards at Von Braun.”

“Yeah? Well, things are different now. From now on when
I want your advice I’ll beat it out of you!”

Mike’s fists got tighter, but before he could think of
a sufficiently insulting reply Nikita said, “What does all this nonsense have
to do with our safety? May I remind you that someone has already
died—presumably, because of this incident—and that the incident itself is not
yet over? Until it is, more deaths must be expected.” Mike and Frank turned to
her but both proved slow in formulating a response. “Perhaps, Mister Walters,”
she continued, “since you are now in charge, you should perform an assessment
of our situation. If that’s not too much to ask.”

Frank grunted, then said, “Yeah, you’re right. I can
always take care of this moron later.”

“Thank you, Mister Walters,” she said. “I am anxious to
learn just what our situation is.”

Frank pulled out his pocketsize and flipped it open.
“Get me the ship.”

A voice of indeterminate sex said, “This is the ship.”

“I want a short analysis of our situation.”

“As you wish. Portions of what follows are already
known to some of you, but none are aware of everything that I am about to
relate, so I will endeavor to leave nothing out.”

Damn!
Mike braced himself.
It’s gonna tell
them I killed Val!

The ship began its summary: “The main engines were
sabotaged with explosive devices by persons unknown.”