What the Silver Dust Conceals

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But the mind fills in the blanks. When Mark’s jaw flies open on the video feed, face shield knocked loose and eyes peeling back, I know the sound that he makes. I’ve heard him laugh, shout, grunt – even cry. So my brain knows the sound of his scream without needing to hear it. Alone on the command deck now, my fingers find the bridge of my nose and I clamp my eyes shut as I lean forward in my chair.

We ferried from the lunar surface depot into orbit with no friction. Transferred the Helium-3 smooth and easy. Then, moments after disengaging from the transfer shuttle, just as we started pushing away from the gravitational boundary, the proximity sensors blared and my HUD lit up with red. Scrapers, I shouted into the comms, brace for evasion.

Scrapers seldom leave orbit. When they do, they have to burn a shitload of fuel leaving the atmosphere, because they are built with these insane shielding alloys, heavier than anything on a transit ship. They slam into you at an almost parallel angle, “scraping” your cargo free and seizing it from orbit while you frantically try to seal your hull breach and correct your flight path. These Scrapers, this time, didn’t get us. They managed to make contact but only knocked loose the radiation shielding, and after a series of tight maneuvers and sharp navigational thrusts, we were on our way out of lunar orbit.

But by then, the shielding alert was blasting through the ship. “External cargo: compromised. Time: 16:39. External cargo: compromised. Time: 16:39.” It is one of the few alerts that transmits all the way to the command hub on earth, and was designed to sound as dire as if the entire ship were breaking apart. Once we are in transearth trajectory, fixing shielding is a straightforward fix, but while we are escaping orbit, there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Which is why I don’t understand what the hell got into Mark.

* * *

The comms indicator lights up. My hand slides over to the touchpad on the arm of my chair, but I close my eyes and cradle my forehead in my palm before opening the beam. It’ll be my brother Roberto. I steel myself for his questions.

“Captain Alex speaking.”

“It’s me, bro. What happened up there?”

“Mark is gone, man. Gone.”

“I know.” He pauses. “I know you were close.”

I nod in the silence that follows. I can almost feel him calculating the appropriate amount of time to wait.

“You were supposed to transfer down here with your crew. We gotta talk. Have you reviewed the feeds?”

“I’ve reviewed them.”

“Our internal claims agent is coming tomorrow morning. She’ll want to transfer to your ship right away. We gotta talk before then.”

I glance at the bottle of Ordha Glenn scotch lying on the ground near my feet, three quarters gone. It was still unopened when we reached terran orbit early this morning. Re-entry shuttles are not gentle.

“I’ll transfer down this evening.”

“Good. Look: it’s too bad about Mark.” He pauses. “This was the wrong time for a hiccup, bro.”

“Hiccup.”

“You know what I mean.”

My eyes fall closed and I swallow what I want to say. “Sure Berto. The helium.”

“This business is our legacy, bro. Our legacy. Remember that.”

* * *

A looming steel fence like a giant thresher climbs twenty feet into the sky from the depot doors, barring entry to my brother’s underground Helium-3 silos. Roberto spends more on security than our next two competitors combined, which shows in the sheer number of guards stationed around the perimeter. Mark thought we were at a military installation the first time I brought him here, ten years ago.

I hadn’t bought my first shuttle yet, then. Roberto didn’t own the storage facility yet, and only had the four shuttles and two orbit-transfer vessels he inherited from our mother. Mark was a childhood friend – he was repairing ships all over Pacifica – former northern California / southern Oregon – and its outer unincorporated zones when we reconnected. He never even tested into the academy but I brought him here to persuade my brother to let me bring him on as an engineer. Roberto gave him a job on the ship I was skippering and tasked me with holding his hand. My crew loved him, and when I finally bought the shuttle from Roberto, I made Mark my head engineer.

Now he’s gone, and I keep seeing the fear in his eyes as he emits his silent scream on the video feed. Why would he go – alone – during extra-orbital thrust? Three minutes after the initial alert, Mark shows up in the airlock. He EVAs out to the external cargo hold to check on the shielding. The feed from the hull of my ship picks him up as he starts in on the repair, his back to the camera. On the feed, it looks as though his mag-boots simply slip out from under him, but the camera doesn’t pick up the velocity and resulting forces operating on the ship during orbital escape. Mark rotates head over heels and dislodges his face plate on the shielding chassis, and there he floats, upside-down relative to the ship, his mouth agape and eyes peeled back. The time keeps ticking in the upper right. 16:47:01…

Roberto now owns this entire facility, along with 14 of the 15 ships it supports. Artificial UV mixes in with the regular light illuminating the underground silo in tandem with the position of the sun. Security includes body temp scans, comprehensive video coverage with infrared mode, tightly controlled access between wings, AI-powered probability calculations profiling all personnel on likelihood of theft, secret-sharing, even suicide.

I palm-scan into the administrative wing. Security guards I’ve known for years eye me coolly. Actual hardwood floors lead along the corridor approaching Roberto’s office. I once asked him where the hell he got the wood for that, and he just smiled wryly. Next come the metal detector, palm wipe, and facial scan, but the full pat-down tells me Roberto is not alone in his office.

A hybrid of an atrium and a military bunker, Roberto’s office features a vast, convex window overlooking the barren hills of the once verdant Klamath Forest, and a recessed refuge zone that descends below ground, stockpiled with food, supplies, and weapons. My brother stands with a woman at the convex window, gazing out from behind his desk. He has had real coffee made for her – the smell is intoxicating. There isn’t a third cup. The woman wears a dark suit and holds her cup and saucer in front of her with her spine straight and shoulders pulled back. They keep their backs to me as I enter, her full attention on Robert as he shares the story of his first visit to the compound, when he famously he decided he would one day own it. Uncertain whether I should approach them, I linger at the entrance and let him finish.

The video feed plays again and again in my mind. I wish I hadn’t had to watch it – when people you love die, you can imagine them still living for years, but not when you watch them go. The mind knows, then, and their death is so final, so complete, that your imagination has nothing to work with. I wish I hadn’t had to see him so afraid and so alone.

The others have noticed me and the mood in the room takes a nosedive. The woman comes toward me, settling in one of the four armchairs in the middle of the office. I approach them and sit in another of the chairs, opposite her. My brother sits casually on the edge of his desk – a stately antique, a work of art made from cherrywood and oak, a thing as rare these days as the hardwood floors we walked in on.

“Alex. Thanks for coming down tonight. I know this is hard.”

We were supposed to talk alone. I nod at my brother and glance warily at the woman – fair-skinned, bird-faced, her hair pulled back with a tidy part in the middle of her scalp. She wears expensive smart-glasses.

“Need anything before we get started?”

I am about to ask for water, but Berto doesn’t wait.

“All right. This isn’t an easy conversation, Alex. I want you to know we are aware this is hard for you.”

“I’m Anne Kelly. I represent your brother’s company in matters of insurance litigation.”

I nod. Unsure what else to say, I reply, “Nice to meet you.”

She clears her throat. I feel stupid. Ms. Anne Kelly continues. “Seems like things really went wrong up there. I’m sorry to hear you lost a crew member. My job is to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure things are in line with expectations, to make sure you and your company are protected.”

“Honestly, I’m more worried about Mark. He’s got a family.”

“I’m glad you mentioned Mark.” Her eyes flit to one side and she reviews something displayed in her glasses. “Mark Waters. What can you tell me about him?”

I glance at Berto. His expression heavy, he gives a reassuring nod. “Be honest. It’s OK to be open here – she represents us. She is on our side against those bottom feeders at the insurance company.”

“Mark was… a hard worker. Solid, reliable.”

“Was he ever tardy? Did he ever miss work?

“No. He was like a clock. Like I said – reliable.”

Ms. Kelly nods slowly. “That’s good. Very good. What about substances? Did he drink? Use synthetics?”

“What – on the job?”

“Sure. Or anytime?”

“No. I mean, everyone drinks a little. But not on duty.”

“Was he ever hungover?”

My fingers find the bridge of my nose. Hungover like I am right now?

“Wait. Are you trying to smear him?”

“No, bro! This is the opposite. She’s just trying to get all the facts about Mark.”

“Understand this: Mark was the best guy in the crew. Ace engineer. He didn’t fuck around, didn’t take risks, didn’t put anyone in danger.”

Ms. Kelly replies, “But he did, didn’t he? He put himself in danger.”

I shake my head and look at the ground. “I don’t know what possessed him to do that.”

There is a lengthy silence. My brother sips his coffee. Ms. Kelly does the same.

“I’m not going to let you smear him.”

They exchange a glance. My brother replies, “No one is going to try to smear him.”

Ms. Kelly clears her throat again. “My understanding,” she says, furrowing her brow and flicking her eyes over something else in her glasses, “is that Mark was brought in on your recommendation?”

“Yes. He was a world-class engineer.”

“But did he have flying experience? Training in orbital transit?”

I glance at my brother, but he can’t hold my gaze and blinks over to Ms. Kelly. I squint at him. “What is this?”

“Any formal training at all?”

Still looking at Roberto, I reply, “I’m guessing you already know the answer to that.” Roberto won’t meet my eye. I look back at Ms. Kelly.

“I still need to confirm this information with you. It was you who decided to promote him to head engineer, was it not?”

“It was.”

“And looking back, what sort of judgment would you say that showed?”

I sit up very straight in my seat. When I look again at my brother, he is standing with his back to me and Ms. Kelly, sipping from his coffee cup and gazing out the convex window at the dusty, orange sky.

* * *

In the early days of Helium-3 mining, returning to earth meant seeing trees and golden sunbeams, feeling the breeze on your face. Now, the surface has changed. There are hardly any forests left in all of Pacifica. Often, the sun glows orange through smoke and dust, and the winds have grown harsh, carrying ash and other particles. Boarding the orbital shuttle, I am actually relieved to be leaving earth. I am not aware of ever having had this feeling. Ms. Anne Kelly the internal claims agent was supposed to accompany me to the Terminus, gather more info, etc., but she has what she needs apparently, and I go up alone.

“Why did you let her tear into me like that?” I asked my brother in his office when we were alone.

“Was any of it untrue?”

I stared at him hard. “‘A thing can be both true, and untruthful.’ Those are your words, Berto.”

Unfazed, he looked away from me, gazing out the window for a long moment. “I’m taking you out of the rotation for now, bro. Till we get things straightened out.”

Like a dollop of liquid nitrogen, a cold shock sinks through me from my throat to my gut. I swallow a stone that has formed at the back of my mouth. “You know that can’t happen.”

Roberto sighs. “The other ships will run at 107% capacity for now to keep us at status quo.”

“No – my ship, Berto. My crew. You can’t ground us. Margins are razor thin as it is.”

“This is how it has to be, little bro. I warned you about hiring Mark. Now you understand why.”

"Mark was solid. He was solid." I shake my head.

"A man has died because you hired him without the proper background. This is how it has to be."

I left before Berto could offer me money. But I’m going to have to take money from him again, if I can’t run the Helium-3. It’s emasculating, but what choice do I have?

Later, sitting in my captain's chair with the rest of the Ordha Glenn in my lap, I navigate to Mark’s personnel file. True, Mark had little in the way of formal training, but he had more than my brother. That doesn’t stop Roberto from making decisions for everyone. Mark knew what he was doing – he was solid. It just doesn’t make sense that he would go out there alone.

I open the file.

Mark’s photo comes up, and my face falls forward into my palm. This crew won’t be the same now. I won’t be the same. Maybe it was his lack of formal training, but he brought so much levity to the crew – arguments would dissolve into laughing fits with a word or two from him, instantly breaking the tension. He was fearless, had more courage than the next five of us put together. But he was not careless. I look up again at his photo and a breathless little sigh escapes me.

Metadata appears to the right side of the photo. I frown at the time signature. Last update: 16:41 PST.

Just minutes before he died. I open the most recent subfolder – his call log. Inside, an incoming call at the top of the list is time-stamped with yesterday’s date and _1641, along with part of a Pacifica phone number. I slide my finger across the touch pad. But as I am about to select the file, it disappears from its folder.

* * *