Cheeks of Red, Soon They're Dead

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Funny how we equate “hearing” with our ears. This particular scream crawled from the soles of my feet through every piece of skin I had to reach the tympanic membrane without crossing a solitary molecule of air.

Maybe it was the look on her face as the airlock slammed shut. Or the knowledge that we had only managed to contain the virus to a portion of the ship – the part Cassie was now locked in. Separating the two parts of the space station required skill and three technicians, all of whom were staring at me, dumbfounded. Grief tangoed with anger in an emotional dance as I gave the order to create a distance boundary between us. For all the good it would do.

The outer chamber was tethered by seven lengths of tensile steel, certified to last a century. And I sincerely hoped they would. We had not tested the ability of the isolation pod to withstand the forces of gravity and solar storms. It was bad enough that I could lose her to the only disease to survive the annihilation of a planet – a simple cold. If the pod should snap loose and drift off into the blackness of the space, I would probably open the airlock and step out to join her.

Cassie pounded on the chamber window, tears marking her flushed cheeks as the pod reached its maximum distance. Her posture, tense with the expression of her rage, coupled with the sensory response I was dealing with clearly transmitted her frustration – aimed at me, mostly. But I couldn't play favourites. The ship and its remaining inhabitants were my responsibility. And the health of the whole outweighed the desires of the one.

Or, in this case, the two.

Four years ago, ninety-two souls had boarded an exploratory inter-stellar ship, headed for the docking station anchored near the Martian north pole. Most of the trip had been spent in stasis, the scientific answer for space-cabin fever. Brief periods of awareness kept our minds locked onto the objective: reaching the colonies and replenishing their supplies. During our months of activity, Cassie and I had grown close. The entire crew knew it. I'm pretty sure the residents on Mars knew it, and we had only docked for three months.

Not everyone fared so well. Living in a floating tin can is not for the faint-hearted and more than one poor soul took an alternate journey. Upon docking, only seventy-eight of us walked down the steel decking to the enclosed

After so long cooped up in the ship, landing on the colonized planet felt like a honeymoon. Our cargo delivered, we were free to tour the dome city, and enjoy the new culture established in the wake of our planetary exploration. The buggies were rugged and afforded me the need to hold Cassie tight as we rumbled across the barren wasteland that surrounded the encampment.

There were heavily shuttered windows on the barracks – I couldn't call them houses for they were far too militaristic to be simple residences – to keep out the glaring solar rays of midday. The dome did an adequate job of filtering the UV rays. Gel-filled pipes led to underground heat exchangers, collecting the daytime warmth for use after the sun slipped from the sky.

Gigantic air-regeneration tubes ran in a grid behind the city, harvesting precious oxygen from the anaerobic digesters. The process was more complicated than I had brains to understand, but Cassie loved learning all about it. How they replenished everything from the waste created by the city. Three thousand people had made the journey fifty years ago. The next generation knew nothing about where their parents came from. And it seemed they liked it that way. These pioneers left their home world with the full understanding that there would be no return. Their only remaining tie was our supply ship.

On our final day Mars-side, Cassie wanted to see the city one last time. We both knew we would not be on the next flight out. The rigours of space travel were still too taxing to make a career of it. Shuttle flights would be the most I could captain after this one. I had mixed emotions as I gathered up my crew and herded them back on board. Looking back at the deep purple sky that surrounded the city, the star-speckled canopy pulled my gaze out as far as I could determine. Space is so vast, I felt lost and reached for Cassie's hand.

As it turns out, after we leave, there would be no more deliveries. The program had been deemed too expensive, not profitable, or some similar excuse. I had been given the news prior to our departure, secreted in a sealed envelope, marked for the commandant's eyes only. Locked away in our ship's vault for the entire trip, I was unaware of the disastrous missive it contained. Now that we were on the dock to depart, I reluctantly handed the envelope to the commandant.

Tearing open the seal with a hiss, the single sheet of paper slipped to the floor. Cassie stooped over to pick it up, her face registering the few words she glanced at in her effort to help. Shaking, she held out the page before turning to me, questions passing over her face as she backed away to enter our ship.

Finally seeing the message for himself, the commandant's expression froze. His eyes, now glacial glue, pinned me to the ship's galley way like a replica butterfly on display for the children.

“Did you know about this?” he demanded, shaking the document in my face.

My voice cowered in my throat as I shook my head. “I was under strict orders not to open it.” I kept shaking, the vibrations making it down to my legs. “I followed my orders.”

The commandant slammed the envelope and severance notice against my chest before spitting at me.

“They have condemned us to die out here. All of us!” He swept his arm out to embrace the city he had the care of. His tone deepened to levels best used for horror film narration. “And your ship does not have the room to take any of us back. Not even the children.”

The paperwork fell to the planks where he ground them into pulp with his boot. “Get your ship out of here before I commandeer it.”

Finding my words at last, I stammered after him. “I am so...sorry. All this...this colony deserves to be supported...” With nothing more I could do but watch the stiff back of the commandant stalking away from me, I stood and gave him the only respect I had left to offer. My unreturned salute dropped slowly to my side as the sun sank beyond the horizon, plunging the docking station into darkness.

Anticipating the lights, I waited.

And waited.

The station stayed in the shadows with little more than security lighting active. We had been effectively terminated.

At my feet, a brief glow dragged my attention back to the trampled letter. As though dipped in neon, the two words illuminated under the orange bulbs of the gantry stopped me cold. Staring towards the dome city, I swallowed the bile that threatened to climb up from the pit of my stomach. The commandant wasn't exaggerating. Fear knotted deeper in my belly. I had touched the envelope.

But Cassie had held the letter itself. The letter I could only see a portion of. The parts that read “contaminated” and “coronavirus”.