A Whisper in the Dark

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. If I heard one, it would have put me more at ease than what I did hear.

It had been almost a month since the Cygnet left the Toro 9 outpost, and I had grown tired of seeing nothing except the dozen people stuck in this oversized tin can along with me. I certainly didn't leave the outpost willingly. After spending six months charting pulsars in Sector 26 Zeta, I was looking forward to putting my feet up for a while and enjoying some R&R. I knew my crew were ready for that, too. Granted, the Toro 9 outpost doesn't have all the amenities of Earth, but the terraforming project there wasn't entirely unsuccessful. After fifty years of work, half of one continent on that barely habitable rock could support people.

I remember too well how I got roped into my newest assignment. I had only been at the outpost for barely more than a day. I was reclining on the visitors' terrace and had just started to brown from the three suns when a Star Corps grunt who looked like he was hardly a year out of boot camp stepped right into my face.

"Commander Rousseau?"

"What do you want, Private? Can't you see I'm trying to relax here?"

The Private came to attention. "I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but I've been sent to take you to the Base Commander immediately."

I sat up at that rather indignantly. It looked like I scared the E-2 right out of his boots. I grumbled, "What does Admiral Reuben want with me?"

"He didn't tell me, sir. He just told me to find you and bring you to him."

Groaning, I got out of the chaise lounge and threw my shirt on. Seeing the new-ish recruit still standing at attention, I gave the standard At Ease, and he relaxed a bit. "He does realize that I have a comm, right? He could've just signaled me."

"I think he was concerned that you would just ignore him, sir."

"I probably would've," I agreed. "My crew and I are on leave, after all."

"I wouldn't have disturbed you except that I was ordered to, sir."

Sighing, I told the kid, "Don't worry. I'm not pissed at you. You're doing what you were told to do. I'm saving my best pissing and moaning for the Admiral."

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The kid, Private First Class DeMarco, led me to the reception area linked to the Base Commander's office. Though we spoke little on the way, he did confirm that he had only been out of basic training for the past seven months. I asked him somewhat jokingly whether he was bored of the Star Corps by that point.

"No, sir."

"Give it a good twenty years, Private."

Private DeMarco curtly nodded and pressed the comm button next to the Admiral's office.

Without preamble, the gruff voice of Admiral Reuben told Private DeMarco to send me in while the door slid open. I walked in without another word as the door slid shut behind me. I stepped up to the Admiral's desk and stood at ease. Admiral Reuben darkened his console to address me.

"A little informal, Commander?" he asked, looking at my sunbathing attire.

"Sorry, sir. When I was dragged off the terrace for an urgent matter, I wasn't aware that there would be time to get into my dress uniform."

The Admiral sneered a little at my sarcasm. "I'll let that slide since I am pulling you away from your leave. Don't make a habit of it. Sit down."

I sat down, and the Admiral pulled out a couple of bottles of water for the both of us. I took a swig and barely managed to choke it down in disgust.

"This is more bitter than coffee, sir!"

"Yes. The water filtration systems haven't completely adjusted to the high metal levels in the planet's groundwater. The people here have had to get used to it for now." He swallowed some water with only the slightest grimace.

I remarked, "I trust I wasn't called here just to evaluate the planet's drinking water, sir."

Admiral Reuben put down his bottle and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed. "Why are you still in the Corps?"

"Excuse me, sir?"

"It's a serious question," the Admiral stated while reactivating his console and thumbing through several screens. "According to your file, you withdrew from combat ops after nine years when your shoulder got perforated by one of a Yggdrani's tentacles. You shifted to survey missions to finish your term of service. However, after you finished your twenty years, you just decided to keep going."

"I had the option to continue, sir."

"I know that. However, according to reports from other commanders, you've become increasing coarse in communiques. It seemed increasingly evident that you were not satisfied with your assignments. Charting sectors isn't fulfilling enough for you?"

I couldn't help but be flummoxed by the inquiries into my record. "Was that question rhetorical, sir?"

The Admiral sneered again. "No, I want an answer, Commander."

I stood up and paced a bit. I had to think. After several long moments, I turned to look at the Admiral. He was leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped, watching me.

"Permission to speak freely, sir."

The Admiral nodded.

"I really don't know why I extended my service," I answered. "I joined the Corps when I finished school. I had so much excitement for seeing other planets. I'd wanted to do that for so long. The first few years, I was over the moon about serving. Going to so many different places was so amazing..."

I turned away from the Admiral and stared down at the ugly sandals I was wearing while getting tanned.

"Then, I got wounded on Yggdra 2. My whole perspective changed overnight. I had never really faced mortality before then. It was scary enough when that oversized squid put a tentacle through my shoulder, but then I learned afterward in the Infirmary that the toxins from the jab would've left me paralyzed or possibly dead if I wasn't lifted out in time."

I lifted my right arm and stared at the very familiar trembling.

"My arm hasn't worked right ever since. It shook me to think how much worse I could've ended up."

I turned back around and sat down, facing the Admiral again.

"I had a term of service to finish; so, I transferred to scout and survey ships. I couldn't bear to be in danger again. You know, it's disheartening to see how much less fun exploring the galaxy can be when you're worried about what else could happen. More and more, each survey assignment just felt like a job. I remember a time when static discharges in a nebula would get me ooh-ing and aah-ing over the color displays. Now, I hardly care. I just map it and move on."

The Admiral asked, "If you were feeling like that about your service, then why'd you extend your term?"

I thought a moment and replied, "I guess I was worried about going back to Earth. Various ships have been my home for more than half of my life. I don't know if Earth could ever be home for me anymore."

I took another swig of the swill in the bottle that's trying to be water before I continued.

"After completing the last assignment, I was seriously considering resigning. I just don't have the flare for doing this stuff anymore."

Admiral Reuben stood up and walked to the back of his office, bending over to pick up something. I hardly noticed until he dropped a large metal object on to his desk with a crash that could alert security on the other side of the outpost.

"Do you know what this is, Commander?"

I looked it over. It didn't take long for me to identify it.

"It's an emergency distress beacon."

The Admiral sat back down.

"Exactly. A freighter happened across it yesterday while passing through Sector 57 Upsilon. It's from the Demeter."

I raised an eyebrow. "I'm not familiar with that ship."

The Admiral responded, "It's a training vessel, new to the fleet, built only a year ago. It was mostly crewed by new cadets."

"Sector 57 Upsilon is a long way from the Academy. What was it doing all the way out there?"

"I don't know. It wasn't part of the ship's itinerary, and we haven't been able to find the wreckage or flight recorder on any long-range scans. The freighter which found the beacon wasn't equipped to search for anything itself."

I sighed as I knew what was coming up. "You want the Cygnet to search for the Demeter, sir?"

The Admiral nodded. "All we need is for you to find the flight recorder and any sign of the ship, even if all you could find is a few kilograms of scrap metal."

"And our leave, sir?"

"Complete this assignment, and your ship will be off-duty for no less than two months."

I stood up. "That'll be fine for the crew, but they'll need a new Commander. When this over, I will resign."

Admiral Reuben stood up. "So be it. Your resignation will be tendered as soon as you return."

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The Cygnet has been searching the sector for any sign of the Demeter for the last twenty-five days. It took three days just to get to Sector 57 Upsilon in the first place. While charted, the sector has been largely unexplored. I think that not even the Corps cares about that part of space. The area is vast, but there are few habitable planets. Much of the sector is filled with static fields and asteroids.

Like traveling through a desert, I found searching the sector to be the epitome of boring, and I wasn't the only one. My pilot, Lieutenant Crist, took to dodging asteroids exaggeratingly just to try to inject some excitement into the proceedings. While his actions tended to annoy me, I could understand why he was doing them. He was assigned to the Cygnet when he was only a few years into his career with the Corps, but he didn't want to be on a survey ship. He was young enough that he wanted to be on a combat ship, where the action is. I had tried to get him the transfer that he wanted, but the Cygnet was the only position available that wasn't back in our home system on basic defensive patrol.

I was shaken out of near stupor and almost out of my chair when Crist pulled hard to starboard.

"Dammit, Crist! Can you stop showing off with the asteroids?"

"That's not why I did it, sir," Crist replied. "Scanners picked up a metallic object about a hundred-thousand kilometers away."

"Another one?" I groaned. "The last few things the scanners caught were just freight containers that pirates ejected."

"This looks smaller than that," Crist answered.

With another groan, I said, "Alright. Let's check it out."

After coasting at minimal speed for an hour, the object was on the monitor, and it wasn't the only thing there. It was surrounded by a mass of shining dust thick enough to form a cloud around it. After deciding against just plucking the solid object out of the mass of dust with the grapple arm, I opted instead to use a magnetic field to sweep the dust into the cargo bay along with the target. Since the Cygnet was a survey ship and not a freighter, the cargo space could only hold about twenty percent of the dust with the object. Luckily, the radioactive decontamination unit in the cargo bay still worked, cleaning everything just enough to make it all safe to examine.

I went below deck to check it out along with my chief science officer, Lieutenant Dearing. It took only a minute of searching the outside of the device for us to find the markings of the Demeter. It was the flight recorder. As for the dust, Dearing was unsure.

"Scanners say that it's metallic debris that could've been from the Demeter, but I've never seen a ship's hull crumble to dust like this before. If they just hit asteroids, the ship would be in much larger chunks."

"Could some kind of energy discharge destabilize the metal like that?"

Dearing scratched his head. "I guess, but I've never seen anything that could've done it."

I was torn. On the one hand, I was curious to find out about what happened to the cadet vessel. Why was it so far away from the Academy? How did it end up in such a desolate area of space? What could've turned a relatively new ship into a pile of dust littering my cargo bay? However, I was also tired. We did what we were ordered to do. I was ready to declare the mission complete and order Crist to return the ship to Toro 9.

When I returned to the bridge, I had decided that we would return to the outpost. However, I did at least want to make it easier for the fleet to find that location again. So, I ordered Dearing to release a homing beacon into the metallic cloud that used to be the Demeter.

"Aye, sir," Dearing responded. Within minutes, I heard the familiar whoosh of a probe being launched.

"Put the beacon on audio. I want to make sure it's working," I ordered.

Dearing tapped a few controls on his console, and a loud ping was airing through the ship's comm system.

"Okay. Crist, set course back to Toro 9, and try not to shake the ship too much this time."

It was Crist's turn to give a bored groan as he confirmed the orders. As the ship started on the trip back to more civilized space, I continued to listen to the beacon's pings as they started to get quieter as the distance opened up.

However, just as I started to slink back into my chair, the pings started to get garbled like there was interference. I ordered Crist to bring the ship to an immediate halt and told Dearing to turn up the volume of the comms. For a few long moments, there was nothing but the pings largely covered with static. Then, from out of the static, came something I didn't expect... a young voice.

"... anyone can receive... fled the Deme... rash lande... lease help..."

I turned to Dearing. "Can you clean that up?"

Dearing quickly worked his controls. "No, there's too much interference, and the signal's too weak."

"Can you at least find the source?"

Dearing worked faster at his station. "It looks like it's coming from a star system about five million kilometers past the beacon."

My brain was racing. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't thinking of relaxation or tedium. I was thinking of the scared voice of the young cadet in the distress call. My mind was made up.

"Crist, set course to trace that signal."

Crist turned around in his seat, confused. "Say again, sir?"

"You heard me, Lieutenant. You wanted excitement? Well, we're on a rescue mission, now."

Crist seemed to light up at my response. He turned around and manned his station.

"Helm is tied into the scanners. Course is set to follow the signal."

I leaned forward in anticipation for the first time in years. "Let's go find them!"

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