Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Just like yesterday, and every day they spent docked with an asteroid, the prisoners went out in their exosuits to mine ore, guided by the dulcet tones of Sinclair on the comms. She was their voice in the darkness, the music in her tone turning the clumsy, hulking steps of the exosuits into a ballet around the machinery, in and out of the mining pit, and back to the safety of the ship.
Edward had to listen to her, as he kept an eye on the prisoners outside, or at least that's what he told himself. Without an open comm channel, he wouldn't know what was happening out there.
"Argh! There's a hole in my suit! Caught it on the edge of the tunnel. I thought it was fine, but now I can hear the air hissing out. I'm going to…"
"Pride, you're going to reach into your emergency kit and pull out the patch spray," Sin said, her voice low and calm, the perfect contrast to Pride's rising panic. "Then spray it onto the damaged section of your suit…"
"I can't see it! It's behind me. I can hear it, but I can't see it and I can't reach it…"
"Who's closest to Pride? Envy, stop what you're doing and move to Pride's position. Find the hole and help him patch it, please."
"I'm on it, Sin," came Envy's voice. A pause, then laughter. "Looks like the asteroid's really into you, Pride. It tried to take you up the arse." Another pause. "Okay, I've patched it, but the hole's right on the buttcrack seam. Don't know how well it'll hold with you moving around."
"Return to the ship, Pride. You follow behind him, Envy, just in case he needs any further patch work," Sin said.
"Yeah." Pride sounded breathless. "Probably time to head in soon, anyway. This deposit's almost mined out, and it's coming up to lunch time."
"What's on the lunch menu for today, Sin?" someone asked.
"Space rocks and comet tails, with primordial soup for starters," Sin said.
Edward grinned. He'd already seen the week's menus, and that was code for spaghetti and meatballs with chunky vegetable soup.
"And here I was hoping for Saturn's rings, or a flat Earth." That had to be Greed.
"Then you never should've told Virtue that calamari and crepes are your favourite foods. What's wrong with you, man? It's like the number one rule of space travel. Never piss off the cook."
"I can't help it. She's just so easy to mess with, and she looks so cute riled up."
"Better not let my sister hear you say that, Greed, or she'll have you eating raw protein paste for the rest of the voyage," Sin said.
Retching sounds came over the radio. Sin just laughed.
Pride reached the airlock, and started taking off his suit.
“Are you sure the rock didn’t go up your arse when it penetrated your suit?” Envy asked.
“You offering to check for me?” Pride fired back.
“Sloth might be our medic, but I’ve had basic first aid training, too. You’ll owe me one, but I’m willing to take one for the team if it stops you from bleeding out in zero g.”
“You just want to get your hands on my arse.”
“Trust me, no one wants to handle your arse. Especially if it’s as canary coloured as the rest of you.”
“Like your green arse is any prettier! Sharing a shower with the whole stars-crossed rainbow is the worst part of this sentence, I swear,” Envy said.
“Can I get confirmation on whether Pride’s intact, or does he need to visit the medbay?” Sin asked.
“I’m fine, Sin. As long as Envy keeps his hands away from my arse,” Pride said. “I’ll take my suit to maintenance and have it serviced.”
“So you’re not getting serviced in the airlock, and it’s safe for the rest of us to come aboard?” one of the others outside called over the comm.
“Exiting the airlock now,” Envy said.
“Yeah, get your Hulk arse out of there. No one wants to see you naked, either,” said another man.
“Hey, better than being bright red or blue. Who ever heard of a blue alien getting laid?” Envy shot back.
With the emergency averted, the channel dissolved into trash talk as they all packed up and headed in.
If this deposit truly was mined out, then Edward needed new orders. They'd have to fly to a new asteroid to start mining, and only the Central Intelligence could tell him where it was. He headed for the office.
Still no new messages had come in. This was getting downright weird. He checked the sensors, but there was no sign of a solar flare. Maybe it had hit Tito, then streamed off on a different vector, away from the asteroid belt.
He tried to comm Tito. Nothing.
This was above his pay grade, he decided. It was Captain Solon's job to decide what to do next. Edward's job as a guard started and ended with the prisoners.
He tried to comm the captain. Nothing. Annoyed, he toggled on the shipwide PA system, and asked the captain to report urgently to the office.
Ten long minutes passed, punctuated only by the prisoners sharing stories about their first space walk, with each tale getting more ridiculous than the last.
Still no response from Captain Solon.
Edward began pulling the surveillance camera footage, flipping through the unchanging images of empty compartments until he reached the cameras for the cargo decks.
There was movement in the cargo holds, all right, but not the kind he'd been looking for.
It looked like the artificial gravity had failed on the cargo levels…
wait, make that all the decks except the crew decks.
How was that even possible, without every alarm sounding?
No gravity in the cargo holds meant they had to be sealed off, because with all those rocks floating around, those sections were too dangerous to enter. But if the captain had gone in there before they were sealed off, he could be trapped, in need of help, unable to comm anyone…
Edward filled the screen with the feeds from all the cargo hold cameras, then scanned them, looking for movement or anything person-shaped. A hand, a foot, a…
Stars.
He could see a hand and a foot, but they were on opposite sides of the cargo hold. And…was that…?
Oh, great blithering, soul-sucking black holes, that was Solon's head, or what was left of it, after it'd been crushed between some of those flying rocks.
There would be no saving Captain Solon. The man was dead.