The Breakers of Silence

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Emma repeated the thought to herself as she peered anxiously at her comrade through a convex crystalline visor. Charlotte knelt steps away in her bulgy, crimson spacesuit, one hand extended into the ruddy dust at her feet, sifting from side to side. A greyish, egg-shaped craft perched atop three spidery legs silhouetted Char some twenty yards away, its conical floodlamps providing the only light by which they could see. Emma could feel herself perspiring within her own suit, a carbon copy of Charlotte’s aside from the fourth stripe adorning the sleeve still dragging through the terrain. Charlotte’s breathing sounded shaky and hollow transmitted into her helmet on old-fashioned radio waves.

They had both heard it. Both stopped dead in their tracks midway to the apex of light beaming from their escape craft, its engines and fans muffled to silence by the void of space. Both held fast their lungs and looked around before catching each other’s uneasy glances and carrying on as I they hadn’t. They shouldn’t have been able to hear anything that didn’t originate from the tiny atmospheres within their suits. But they had.

Charlotte stood up, scanned the projection on her shield.

“Says it’s not organic,” she said.

“Fuck,” Emma followed.

“Fuck is right. We’re down to two, maybe three days’ rations, and these outlier moons have less life than your dating game. We’ll be lucky if we have fuel enough to fly back to Gazea to die properly with Esthelite beams through our skulls.”

Emma chortled. “I’d rather defrag my suit and let my contorted remains float through the abyss for all time. Maybe scare some little kid looking out his cruise window light-years from here.”

“You would,” said Char. “But I ain’t dying ‘til I get back to that bevel-wine bar by the barracks on Corman.”

“Forget about it, girl,” Emma chided. “That waitress probably throws herself at every captain as comes through for sips.”

“Maybe so,” retorted Charlotte with a grin, “but you didn’t see the way her…”

Charlotte froze mid-sentence and stared wide-eyed over Emma’s shoulder. Emma swiveled her head around to follow her captain’s gaze and seek the source of the sound—the scream in the vacuum of space she shouldn’t be able to hear.

What minutes ago had seemed like a child wailing in the distance, now resembled a screeching harpy at close quarters. Emma felt the hairs on her arms prick up in her suit as she strained to see beyond the encapsulated luminescence of their floodlamp. Charlotte’s sharp intake of breath crackled through her comm-link.

“Run!” Charlotte shouted as she turned back to their ship.

Emma spun around to follow.

Running without gravity is never satisfying, less so with terrors unknown in hot pursuit. Emma scanned hastily through her retinal menu as she lumbered after Charlotte, each engaging their suits’ propellants in sequence and jerking forward. Emma nearly smashed into a telescoping stabilizer as she raced up the ramp into the atmo bay. Charlotte reached the top ahead of her and frantically pounded at the recapture toggle. Emma felt herself carried upwards as the ramp retracted with her still upon it. She fell forward in an awkward, zero-g dive, as much to clear the chamber faster as to avoid hitting her head as the gap between the ramp and the atmo bay closed.

By the time Emma regained her footing, Charlotte was already at the opposite wall repeatedly mashing the collider switch to merge pressure from the spacecraft above. Those handful of seconds felt like millennia as Emma warily eyed the ridged platform beneath her feet—the paltry barrier between them and whatever loathsome eidolon had overcome the physics of sound on an obscure moon of Gazea. Charlotte turned towards Emma as the atmospheric meter began to escalate in blue light.

“What in the holy heck was that, Em?” she whispered.

“Ghost of your crazy ex from Malivoy traipsed halfway across the galaxy, pissed you stole her vintage thermosphere?” Emma offered.

“Oh, fuck right off,” said Charlotte. “Did you actually see anything?”

“Nah, I thought you must’ve when you said run,” Emma replied. “Wasn’t about to wait and find out.”

“I didn’t see anything, but I felt it,” said Charlotte. “And it sounded like it was snuggled up next to me in a bunk for fuck’s sake.”

The atmo bay overheads swelled to life, the pleasant yellow of filament lightbulbs, letting them know it was safe to defrag their suits and breath the sterile air. Charlotte had her helmet off in a flash, shaking out a disheveled mop of flaxen hair and turning her mousy-faced attention to freeing her hands. She reached to unlock the mainstay hatch, then lurched back, slamming her palms over her ears as the otherworldly scream again pierced their perceptions. Emma saw the steel mixed with fear in Charlotte’s emerald eyes as she looked up then back to Emma.

The sound they shouldn’t have been able to hear in the vacuum of space definitely shouldn’t have been able to get into their ship without passing through the atmo bay.

“Still think it’s my ex, eh?” Charlotte asked cynically, grabbing the bay’s lone photon rifle and tossing it to Emma.

“She was an awfully vindictive bitch as I recall,” Emma replied, trying not to sound scared out of her skin.

Charlotte writhed from her suit’s torso to reveal black military fatigues and fished a charge-knife from her belt. Emma raised a wistful eyebrow at the tiny blade, which seemed woefully insufficient for fighting enigmatic moon demons.

“Yeah, yeah,” quipped Charlotte. “If we aren’t shredded to bits before our next non-planetary excursion, remind me to keep another rifle in the atmo bay.” She puffed out her cheeks then exhaled. “Ready?”

“Ready,” said Emma.

“Don’t fucking miss,” said Charlotte.

“I never miss.”

Charlotte ripped open the hatch and leapt aside as Emma sighted her photon rifle into the darkness above, heart pounding in her chest.