Fisherman

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

Brandon’s words echoed in my mind as I was slowly being lowered through the deep, empty blackness.

Who was I to know whether it was really empty or not? Much like a child who closes their eyes to hide from the monsters, how could I truly know I was alone simply because I couldn’t see?

Thank Brandon for getting me all worried, again, instead of focusing on my job. My simple, safe, scream-averse job.

Planet 34-rth needed more sodium to power the ships coming and going. It needed more sodium to power the buildings that housed the planet-dwellers. It needed more sodium to turn on the lights. The lights that relied on me to creep through the emptiness to turn them on.

Sodium was the name of the game and I mined it. Wherever I and my crew, the crew of the proud Extraction Ship 2280, were tasked to go, we went. Pen pushers higher up in Reticulite gave me my orders and I gave my same orders to my crew. Then we went off on our sweet lonesome to the destination that provided the sodium.

It was an easy job for good pay. Most jobs working for Reticulite were good pay, as most jobs required going out into the less explored areas of the galaxy. It wasn’t so dangerous once you considered the fact that it was extremely unlikely for us to run into varied lifeforms out in the wilderness that we hadn’t already picked up on radars.

I used this knowledge to calm me as I sank further and further into nothing. Up at the surface of the unnamed, inconsequential planet that we had been told to go to, the rest of my crew performed their duties as their orders dictated. I trusted them with my life, as if the thin cord keeping me from a drop to my death from an unknown height didn’t prove it already.

It wasn’t strictly my job to go first into the potential mining field, however I refused to order someone else to do a job I wouldn’t do myself. If there were dangers, I would be the one to succumb to them, not any of my crew.

“How is it looking, Ziolet?” The crackling voice of Hammer, my best friend out in these excavations, came through.

“Still just a lotta nothing,” I replied, “how is everything progressing up top?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” Hammer said, “Robert and Electa are debating who’s turn it is to inspect the integrity of the ship’s exterior and Gabe seems to have picked a fight with a flower.”

“My money’s on the flower,” I said, my chuckles rattling around in my mask. That sparked a thought. “Hey, Hammer?”

“Still here.”

“Didn’t the mission briefing say that this planet had an atmosphere?”

“I think so, why?”

“I’m still wearing a mask.”

“Good thing too,” Hammer said, joking, but with a sterner undertone, “the atmosphere was meant to be toxic as all hell.”

“It’s just,” I could really put my nagging feeling into words as there was no current proof to back it up. “I get the feeling there isn’t an atmosphere here. I think the briefing was wrong.”

“Ziolet…”

“I know, I know. The briefing is never wrong. I just, can’t hear anything at all outside of my mask. Usually, I’d be able to hear the chord lowering me down, at least.”

“We’ll see if we can figure out a good reason as to whether sound could be affected, okay?” Hammer said, “don’t let Brandon get to you. He jokes like that because he knows it gets to you.”

“Don’t start with the pep talks, Hammer,” I warned, forcing a chuckle to let him know I wasn’t being too serious.

I was about to say something further, to continue passing the time, but my feet brushing up against something beneath me. I angled myself down to make sure I was settling myself onto the ground safely, however I still couldn’t see anything. There was no sign of the ground and my torches indicated nothing nearby me but the singular chord reaching up into the soulless pupil that stared back down.

What the hell was-

I couldn’t finish my thought as I heard my corresponder switch to active. I waited to hear what was being said, but no words came.

And then the chord snapped.