Netting Grace: Chapter One

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

For Genevieve Davis, screams were a beacon of hope in the long dark.

“Rescue One, this is Station Thirteen. Over.” The call came crackling in just as Genevieve had queued up her favorite playlist, interrupting ‘Radar Love’ by Golden Earring.

Using one sock-snuggled foot, she spun her chair around to face her sprawling communications console and switched on her mic. “Rescue One to Station Thirteen, go ahead.”

“Rescue One,” replied Station Thirteen, “we’ve got reports coming in of a construction worker on the Hermes Path Project who broke protocol and failed his mag-jump. Shot way off course, never turned on his emergency beacon, and the guys out there don’t have a bead on him. Name’s Thomas Grace, ID 1510137. Over.”

Genevieve chuckled quietly to herself. “Grace, huh? Okay. Does he have a full tank? Over.”

“Last tank status was 78% capacity,” said Station Thirteen, “but he’s a greenhorn—”

“And probably panicking, yeah,” she interrupted. “All right, send me his last known coordinates and trajectory, and I’ll see if I can bring him home. Over.”

“You always do, Rescue One. Happy netting. Over and out.” Genevieve clicked off her mic, frowning slightly at Station Thirteen’s last message; she knew they were just being complimentary, but it was far from the truth. Netting a free-floating worker was, at best, a fifty-fifty shot, and while she had a better success rate than most, the ones who never came home would always weigh heavily on her mind. She pulled up her Intelli-Nav system, using a large touchscreen panel that filled the center section of her console, and dragged down the incoming coordinates from Station Thirteen. As it locked in, ‘Radar Love’ immediately resumed playing.

She rubbed her face with her hands and fired up Rescue One’s engines. “Let’s go, Thomas Grace. Hopefully you haven’t sucked up all your oxygen yet.”

As far as ships go, Rescue One was far from the most visually stunning vessel in space, having been loosely modeled after a vintage fire engine called the Dennis F12 Pump Escape. A perfectly fine idea on paper, sure, but the reality of it left the Rescue fleet looking like a bunch of fat, cherry-red slugs with flat sides, chrome accents, and a bevy of radio equipment jutting out of their rounded, matte black tops. What they lacked in aesthetics was more than compensated for in all that radio equipment, however; the state-of-the-art full-frequency receivers, beacons, broadbeam transmitters, and multiwave signal capture devices meant a skilled technician could pick up even the faintest cries for help.

Not bad for a ship that looked like it belonged in a cartoon.

With an interior design closer to an ambulance than a passenger vessel, Rescue One was cramped, fitting no more than three people at a time -- four, uncomfortably. As a rule, most Rescue ships only carried one technician and one medic at any given time. Genevieve’s medic, Sadie, was doing what she did best: Napping on the stretcher.

“Hey, Sadie,” Genevieve called back, her fingertips busily sliding over the touchscreen to chart a course around Thomas’ last known whereabouts. “Sadie! Wake up!”

“Mmmurmmph,” mumbled Sadie from the intake bay. Genevieve spun her chair around, grabbed her empty flash-caff cup, and whipped it sidearm down the storage hall. The metal cup clanged loudly against the stretcher’s stabilizing bars, causing Sadie to jerk upright in a panic. “Wha—what? I’m up, I’m up. We got a live one?”

“Hopefully,” replied Genevieve. “New guy, skipped protocol, flubbed his mag-jump and sailed way off course. Didn’t switch on his beacon. He was at 78% oxygen before he floated out of range. We’re gonna need to scan and net.”

“Oh, goodie,” said Sadie amidst a yawn, stretching herself awake. “So I’m thinking trauma; hopefully his suit’s been pumping his meds to keep his heart going and his temperature stable but he’ll have to come down from that.” She hopped off the stretcher and started prepping the intake bay, pulling gear boxes out of the storage hall as she spoke. “Any idea how long he’s been out there?”

“According to what Station Thirteen sent me, approaching an hour.”

“Oh, God,” said Sadie. “And he’s a newbie? I bet his suit’s full.”

“Yeeeep,” agreed Genevieve, switching on Rescue One’s orange and white signal lights. “Glad I’m up here and you’re back there.”

“You’re still going to smell it.”

“Maybe, but you’re the one who has to vacuum it out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sadie, scrubbing down the stretcher with a sanitizing sponge. “I think I’m starting to understand why you never did your emergency medicine courses.”

“Oh, I did them,” replied Genevieve, fiddling with a frequency gauge on her console. “I just never took the re-certification test. They were going to kick you off Rescue One and make this a single-manned ship again.”

Sadie dropped her sponge. “They what? Wait, again?”

“Yeah,” Genevieve continued. “More Allied Coalition of Explorable Space BS. Saw it happen on Rescue Three, Six, and Seventeen.” She paused, turning her chair halfway so she could peer back at Sadie through the hallway. “Let’s just call it a peaceful protest. Besides, I’d get lonely out here without your snoring to keep me company.”

“I do not snore!” said Sadie, grabbing up her sponge. She squeezed it, watching the iridescent bubbles squish out and pop in the dry cabin air, before glancing back at Genevieve with a slightly sheepish shrug. “Thanks, though. I appreciate it. I—I didn’t know all that.”

“I know. It’s okay,” Genevieve replied, wheeling her chair back around to face her console. “Most people don’t know about it. I’m not supposed to know about it. Government cuts, layoffs, red tape, accounting excuses, you know the drill. They’ll come for us all eventually.”

“That’s cheerful.”

“Oh, you know me. I’m a bucket of sunshine.”

“They’ll never get rid of you, though. You’ve got the best ears on the Force.”

Genevieve didn’t answer that.

Rescue One careened past Hestia’s Kettle, the giant station city that housed every tradesman, merchant, grunt, pilot, and miner that worked on the Hermes Path Project -- and, in some cases, their families as well. Known colloquially as “The Boiler,” Hestia’s Kettle consisted of one large, gleaming central dome, covered in energy-conversion paneling, with several housing towers jutting out of it and a series of concentric circles beneath for docking, maintenance, and other basic industrial needs. Genevieve always wondered if the name or the design came first, or if it was entirely coincidental that the whole thing looked a bit like a shiny kettle on an electric burner. Either way, it was an aging concept city, a relic of the Allied Coalition’s earlier halcyon days.

Sadie leaned against the back of Genevieve’s chair, gazing out at The Boiler from the side viewport. “Why doesn’t ACES build anything like that anymore?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because it’s ugly?” Genevieve responded, busily tweaking her receivers while holding one cup of a set of headphones up to her ear. She reached over and clicked off her playlist, filling the ship with the soft white noise of its mag-drive engines.

“No, I mean, not like that exactly, but concept stuff. Fancy places to live that don’t all look like honeycombs and plain, boring boxes. You know, interesting things.” She shifted from her spot against the back of the chair to lean instead against the viewport, craning her neck to keep The Boiler in sight as it disappeared below them. “I’d much rather live in a place like that than in my stupid apartment.”

“It probably comes down to money,” said Genevieve. “Hestia’s Kettle and all the other concept cities were made to get people interested in pushing farther out into space. Once people were interested enough, they didn’t have to put as much effort in.” There was a pause, and Genevieve looked like she was going to say something more, but she fell silent instead.

“The Hermes Path Project looks nice, though,” Sadie added in an absent-minded way as she pushed herself away from the side viewport. “All the stations on it, I mean. But I guess it’s supposed to be that way, huh?”

Genevieve nodded. “Has to. Those stations are basically resorts. You won’t see mom and pop ships pulling up to anything but the lower decks.”

“Well, I will. I’ll save up for it, make a scene.” Sadie playfully stuck her nose up in the air and strutted her way back to the intake bay, leaving Genevieve to laugh by herself at the communications console.

Moments later, Rescue One’s communications console beeped to let Genevieve know they’d locked onto Thomas’ last known trajectory and had begun the exploratory course she had programmed in earlier. “Okay Sadie,” she called back. “We’re starting the crawl.”

“You want me to keep eyes up?” Sadie replied, referring to a set of cameras at the rear of the vessel.

“Sure, can’t hurt. No idea which way he’s swimming. If he tried to propel himself, well…”

“Oh, God. The vomit.” Sadie crumpled into a chair and pulled down the aft observation panel, opening all four rear cameras so they could see in every direction.

“I was more concerned about spin and direction, but yeah, vomit’s a problem, too,” said Genevieve as she settled her headset fully onto her ears. She flicked on her mic and keyed in a broadcast code, waiting for a familiar three-toned response before transmitting. “Station Thirteen, this is Rescue One. Over.”

There was a pause, then the radio crackled to life as before. “Rescue One, this is Station Thirteen. What is your status? Over.”

“Station Thirteen, we’ve locked onto Thomas Grace’s last known trajectory and have initiated standard scanning course. Permission to net regardless of condition? Over.”

“Permission granted, Rescue One. Be advised, we’ve received a report from Grace’s supervisor that he was involved in an altercation with another welderman before his shift started today. Over.”

Genevieve tsked quietly to herself. “What kind of altercation? Over.”

“Unclear, Rescue One,” replied Station Thirteen. “Recommend you proceed with caution. Over.”

“Roger, Station Thirteen. Over and out.” Genevieve clicked off her mic and groaned, rubbing the back of her neck. Inexperienced and combative and probably panicking and possibly quite sick and likely covered in his own muck by now. This was going to be an interesting one. “Get ready, Sadie,” she called back. “This guy might be a fighter.”

“Oh, goodie.”

In training, the crawl was always referred to as the “make or break” portion of a rescue technician’s course. Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours, and only the most patient recruits would make it through the long stretches of utter silence without cracking or falling asleep. Some quickly learned, as Genevieve did, that each speaker in every Rescue vessel could be independently set to a separate channel, and busying oneself with the task of cycling through scans and volume levels was key to staying alert. She teased one cup of her headphones just slightly off-center from her ear so she could hear both the sounds coming out of that speaker and the speakers around her, focusing on a stream of data coming in on her touchscreen. They were picking up ambient construction chatter, c-band transmissions from cargo ships, even radio stations playing in apartments back at Hestia’s Kettle. She carefully isolated and muted every incorrect sound and split every channel that could possibly carry Thomas’ suit mic or Core-comm, then leaned back as they drifted in stark, swollen quiet.

Genevieve found it peaceful. There was a zen-like aspect to it; a marriage of contemplative tranquility with the analytical process of rolling through each receiver’s capabilities, reaching out into the dark with a complex set of “ears” to save one single, precious life. Sometimes more.

Sadie was less at ease with the crawl. She fidgeted in her seat, zoomed in and out on the cameras, bit at her knuckles, and scuffed her sock-covered feet back and forth over the pounded metal flooring. Though gallows humor was rampant in their profession, the thought that someone might come in with severe trauma, suit failure, or worse kept her on edge every run. It was always funny until it was really happening, and then it was one hundred percent serious, one hundred percent of the time.

“I think I’ve got something,” said Genevieve. “It’s faint, but it’s there. Zeroing in.” She repositioned her headphones and listened intently, keying the volume up in careful increments.

There it was. A heavy, shaking breath, followed by the telltale thin wheeze of suit distress.

“Got him,” she said. “Sounds like he’s in respiratory, possibly stage two. I’ll put it through the main speakers.” She shifted her headphones again and flipped the input over to Rescue One, filling the cabin with Thomas’ ragged breathing.

“That might even be stage three,” said Sadie, tilting her head to the side. “Was his suit damaged or something?”

“Not that I know of. Patching through to his Core-comm.” Genevieve switched her mic on and focused her output channel scanners on Thomas’ signal until the right frequency clicked. She punched his ID and the ACES encryption code in on her communications panel, same as she always did for every other lost construction worker, and waited.

ERROR. INCORRECT EMPLOYEE IDENTIFICATION CODE.

“Oh, for the love of…” Genevieve tried again, this time pulling up the original information sent from Station Thirteen to cross-check herself.

ERROR. INCORRECT EMPLOYEE IDENTIFICATION CODE.

“What’s going on?” asked Sadie. “He’s starting to sound pretty bad.”

“Says his ID is incorrect,” replied Genevieve. “Hold on.” She called up Station Thirteen again, not waiting for them to chime in their three-toned go-ahead this time. Someone was holding up the line with chatter about what lanes were open on the hyper-belt. “Break, break. Station Thirteen, this is Rescue One. I need an immediate ID verification for a Thomas Grace, ACES worker 1510137. Please respond.”

After a painful pause, Station Thirteen gave their confused reply. “Rescue One, this is Station Thirteen. Say again. Over.”

Genevieve pushed down the urge to swear. “Station Thirteen, this is Rescue One. I need an immediate ID verification for a Thomas Grace, ACES worker 1510137. Over.”

“Roger Rescue One. ID verification affirmative. Be advised, ID flagged as terminated. Over.”

“What the hell did he just say?” said Sadie, doing the swearing for Genevieve.

“Station Thirteen, I’m going to need an emergency access code for a deactivated ACES Core-comm. Over.” Genevieve began furiously tapping away at her communications console, trying to open a channel into Thomas’ glorified walkie-talkie any way she could.

“Did they just say he got fired? They fired that man? Are you kidding me right now?” Sadie was pacing in the intake bay, gesticulating wildly in exasperation. “Do you think they even told him? Or did they just shut off his auxiliary suit functions without a word?” She pointed up at the cabin speakers, which were still wheezing with the sound of Thomas struggling to breathe. “We should record this and send it to ACES so they can see what they’ve done.”

“Sadie,” said Genevieve, “I’m going to need you to sit back down and try to be calm. Please.” She set her jaw and grit her teeth, pulling up a message from Station Thirteen that held an impossibly long string of characters. “ACES terminations take a long time to process. Someone would have had to request his dismissal days ago, at least.”

Sadie plunked back down in her chair, eyes wide, forehead planted firmly against her fingertips and elbows on her knees. “It doesn’t make sense,” she murmured.

“Rescue One, please confirm receipt of digital transmission. Over.”

“Affirmative, Station Thirteen. Access code received. Entering it in now. Over.” Genevieve had already begun copying over the code manually, long and frustrating as that was. She couldn’t let go of the feeling that there was something more going on with this guy, though; it was too unusual that he messed up so tremendously, had his rescue call come in nearly an hour after going overboard, was reported as possibly combative, and just happened to have his pink slip processed while he was missing.

One of those things would be pretty typical stuff. Two, okay. Three? That would make her suspicious. But all four -- alarm bells were ringing.

“Roger, Rescue One. Keep this channel open until comms are breached. Over.”

“Roger that, Station Thirteen. Hey, do me a favor and see if you can dig up his personal file,” Genevieve paused, searching for a reasonable excuse. “I need to write a full report after this. Over.”

“What are you doing?” whispered Sadie. Genevieve waved a wild, but dismissive arm in the general direction of the storage hall, trying to get her to shut up.

“Negative, Rescue One. Thomas Grace has been terminated from his position with ACES and his personal files are privileged information.” Station Thirteen went quiet for a moment, and when he returned, his voice was low and uncomfortable. “You’ll have to speak to Internal Affairs about your report. Over.”

Genevieve left that comment unanswered, knowing full well what it meant -- she was just supposed to do her job and not get nosey. Fine. She’d do it her way, then.

She’d just have to see what Thomas had to say about all of it.

As she punched in the last lines of code, she heard the comforting click of her output channel connecting to Thomas’ Core-comm. Her communications panel flashed green on his signal, giving her the oh-so-cheerful LINK ESTABLISHED confirmation she loved to see. “Station Thirteen, this is Rescue One. Link established. Ready to commence contact and netting procedures. Over.”

“Roger, Rescue One. Happy netting. Over and out.”

Genevieve closed the call with Station Thirteen and opened a direct transmission to Thomas’ Core-comm, temporarily lowering the input she’d been receiving from his suit mic. “Thomas Grace, ID 1510137, this is Rescue One. Please acknowledge.”

Only breathing in response. Genevieve repeated herself, all the while trying to get a lock on the receiving location. He didn’t seem far; too far to see through the viewport, but close enough to comb through the general area with the Intelli-Nav.

“Leave me alone,” he finally replied. His voice sounded thin and defeated, like someone struggling through both the death of a loved one and the worst hangover of their life.

“No can do, Thomas,” said Genevieve. “Why don’t you switch on your beacon and make this a little easier for all of us, okay?”

“No,” he whimpered. “It needs to be an accident.”

Genevieve shot a concerned look back at Sadie, who was busily prepping for an intense trauma admission. Sadie caught her look and shook her head, mouthing the words, “Oh my God,” in return.

“Thomas,” said Genevieve, trying to make her voice even and comforting, “what needs to be an accident?”

“My brother, he works in sourcing,” he said, pausing afterwards to suck in air as hard as he could, which wasn’t terribly effective from the sound of it. “He got me this job, and it was supposed to be permanent. But it’s not. I got flagged as a fill-and-drop.” He tried to sob, but his lungs were straining so hard just to breathe that his cries turned to high-pitched, distorted whines over the Core-comm. “I’m a damn tax break. I got kids, man. A wife. ACES’ll let me go and we won’t have anywhere to live or anything. If I die… If I die, they get a shuttle out at least, and some digi-pay.”

“Thomas, turn on your beacon. Let us help you.”

“No!” Then, after an aching minute of his ragged breathing, “I know who you are. Rescue One.” He spat the words out, though it was difficult for Genevieve to tell if it was through stress or emotion. “The guys talk, y’know. Help me the way you helped that tankerman.”

A tray clattered as Sadie tripped over herself in the intake bay, taken completely off-guard. “What did he just say? Genevieve, what is he talking about?”

Genevieve muted her mic momentarily, staring hard at the slowly-shrinking locator circle on the Intelli-Nav. “His position on the Hermes Path Project was a fake job. If ACES has a certain number of new hires every tax year, they get a tax break. But there’s no law that says they have to keep those new hires, so some of them just get dropped. A report is usually filed, saying they broke the rules or failed to show up… or got into a fight.”

Sadie nodded quietly, carefully rearranging items on the tray she’d jostled moments ago. “Well, that really sucks,” she said, “but that’s not what I was asking about, and you know it.”

“I know,” replied Genevieve, before unmuting her mic again. “Well, Thomas,” she said, “now I’m going to have to reel you in so you can tell all the guys that tankerman was already dead when I found him.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You find people by sound. Dead men don’t make sounds.”

“Oh, sure they do. All that protein paste and carbo-mash they feed you builds up a lot of gas, especially once the digestive system starts breaking down.” Genevieve expanded the Intelli-Nav display with her fingertips and drew a triangulation pinpointer within the locator circle as she spoke. “I just thought he was groaning. Imagine my surprise.”

“That’s… that’s BS,” he said, sounding as if he wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not.

“What’s your wife’s name, Thomas?”

“Shut up.”

“That’s not a very nice name,” said Genevieve. “What about your kids? I always wanted kids. Wasn’t really in the cards for me, though.”

“Very sad,” he replied, wheezing long and low. “What am I, your… your therapist or… or something?”

Genevieve smirked. “No, of course not. Just trying to get to know you a little bit, since you’re not going to die. Not today, at least.” The triangulation pinpointer marked Thomas’ most probable location, allowing the Intelli-Nav system to redirect Rescue One’s course toward it. “How about some music, then?” Genevieve switched off all non-mandatory outside lights and programmed in a smart-net release, anticipating a desperate reaction from Thomas once he spotted Rescue One. He’d be harder to see, too, but if he was still carrying any of his welderman equipment, hopefully the net would grab him up before he’d have a chance to pop his helmet or bust the seals on his gear straps. “What’s your favorite song? May as well listen to something.”

“’Go to Hell’ by Alice Cooper,” he said, as brazenly as his breathy, feeble voice could manage.

“Okay then,” she replied with a laugh. “Guess we’re going to hell.” She queued it up on repeat, knowing full well he didn’t expect her to, and sang along as Rescue One crept ever closer—

Closer—

She cut her mic as just as the haunting percussion led into a final guitar solo, shouting back to Sadie with, “Now, now!” The smart-net release shot out twelve mag-linked cohesion points, which spun out to form a sphere around their intended target area and automatically wove resistance bands between one another after locking in place. With a flick of a switch, Rescue One then extended its connector band, simultaneously shrinking the net down to size and hauling it in -- hopefully with their prize in tow.

Meanwhile, Sadie had drawn down the clear contaminant door between the intake bay and the storage hall, strapped on her PPE and emergency airlock protocol suit, and even yanked down the net-stabilizing mag-arm. “Just in case,” she murmured to herself.

Both of them waited apprehensively as the net coiled into the aft airlock, the familiar sounds of pressurization and sanitizing spray hissing wildly doing little to ease their worries. Genevieve stood and watched from her perch at the communications console, ready to turn and try again immediately should the airlock be empty, while Sadie hung anxiously on the mag-arm.

With a loud clunk, the inner airlock doors unsealed themselves. Sadie reached over with one hand and punched in her authorization code, but in a fit of nerves she swung the mag-arm out the second they began to open. Electric blue tendrils curled out from between the heavy, cherry-red doors, connecting to the arm like a crackling spider web, and behind it dragged a limp, but weakly flailing, cocoon.

Sadie entered in the lock code and grabbed her net hook, deftly rearranging the cohesion points so that they would not only hold Thomas still but also bring him up onto the stretcher for her. She grabbed two from his legs and connected them to the mag-arm like a hammock, letting Rescue One do all the lifting while she merely positioned him where she needed him to be. Meanwhile, Genevieve took a few steps forward, leaning with one arm against the opening of the storage hallway to watch over Sadie as she worked in those few tense moments of initial intake protocol. Once she was satisfied that Thomas wasn’t going to be able to harm her partner, she returned to her seat.

It wasn’t until Sadie had him strapped down, helmet off, lines in, and ready to be fully intubated that she noticed the name on his suit.

Wagner.

“Genevieeeeeve!” she yelled. “Genevieve!”

The man coughed out a low chuckle, grinning up at Sadie.

“Genevieve! Genevieve!” Sadie repeated, backing away. “It’s not him!”

“What?” shouted Genevieve, jumping back up and rushing down to the contaminant door. “What’s going on in there?”

“Who are you?” said Sadie, clutching her intubation kit as if it were something she could use as a weapon.

“Name’s Frank,” he wheezed. “I’m the guy that decked ol’ Thomas this morning. Figured I’d go out with a bang. He had it coming.” He coughed violently, shivering as the sedatives Sadie had given him started to take hold. “Told you to let me die.”

Genevieve smacked the contaminant door in frustration and ran back up to the communications console, Alice Cooper still looping through the speakers. She jabbed an angry finger down on her playlist display to mute the music and called up Station Thirteen.

“Station Thirteen, this is Rescue One. I’m afraid we have a serious problem. Over.”

Thank you for reading. Any and all tips generated from this story will go directly to my daughter's college education fund, as she has a bright future in astrobiology and dreams far more grand than any sci-fi story could ever manage to capture.