And Silent Were The Stars
Part 1: The Survivor
Kate Amedeo
Copyright 2016 Kate Amedeo
And Silent Were The Stars
Part 1: The Survivor
Part 2: The Awakening
Other short stories:
On The Beach
The Bridge
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For Stefano
And Silent Were The Stars
Part 1: The Survivor
The long corridor stretched ahead and no matter how fast she ran she could not reach the other end of it. Rebecca stopped and looked around. The metal walls were too tall; squares of fluorescent lamps cut into the dark ceiling above her head every couple of meters; the door handles were so high above the floor she could barely reach them. She felt so small. So alone. And only Tom’s voice, coming from somewhere up ahead, was there with her in the cold emptiness.
“Enie, menie, miny, moe…” His voice echoed through the corridor.
“Tom!” Rebecca heard his name come out of her mouth and reverberate, dissolving into the never-ending corridor. “Tom!”
She heard his laughter bounce off the walls, one moment sounding far away, the next so close it made her turn around, her thin brown braids spinning in the air and slapping her cheeks. But he wasn’t there. He was never there.
“Beccs…” he stretched. “Come out, come out wherever you are…”
“Tom!” She called out louder and felt tears stream down her cheeks. “I don’t want to play anymore!”
Another whirlpool of laughter surrounded her and then dissipated into the darkness which now was gathering behind her back. She turned around and fear traced its chilly finger across her backbone, raising every smallest hair on her skin. There was something in the pitch black. It was watching her. And it was getting closer, slowly, patiently.
“I don’t want to PLAY!” She sobbed, rubbing the tears off with the sleeve of her checkered dress and backing up. Suddenly, she felt someone grab her by the shoulders from behind and heard Tom’s voice loud in her ears, “WAKE UP!”
(•••)
A pale blue light of the holoscreen lit up in the darkness of the tiny cabin and a quiet beeping sound filled the silence. It took Rebecca a couple of seconds to realize the sound was coming from somewhere outside her dream. She threw the thin thermal blanket off and sat up on the cot. Her bare feet touched the rubber covering of the floor. The tank top soaked in cold sweat stuck to her skin. Rubbing her eyes with one hand, she reached out to the screen and touched the answer button.
A man’s face appeared in front of her. His pale blue eyes planted deep within the thin face were partially covered by the heavy, drooping eyelids similar to those of a basset hound. He stared at her from behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
“What is it, Arthur?” she asked, squinting at the light of the holoscreen.
“Hey, Becky,” he said, revealing pearly white teeth as the narrow line of his lips split into a smile. “They are heading back. Prep the quarantine area.”
She cringed at Becky. For a second she wanted to remind him that it’s Rebecca but decided to let it go.
“How many?” Her eyes were now wide open and focused on the screen. The light of the cabin grew brighter as her hand reached the touchscreen on the wall above the narrow bed, moving the light control slider to the right.
“One.” His smile shrunk.
One. She tried to bring up the numbers from the report she’d read last evening before the rescue vessel took off for the colony. There were supposed to be at least a hundred and fifty-eight colonists down there.
“And the rest?”
“No trace of anyone else. No bodies either. Doc said that they managed to get only to the second level. The third is sealed off. One of the techs has tried to get the elevators running but with no luck. Captain’s orders. They are on their way back to the ship.”
Only one survivor. Quarantine. A standard procedure but there was something that made her uneasy. Her eyes shifted away from the screen and traced the thin line of light that stretched all the way across the wall under the low ceiling and illuminated the room with a soft white glow.
“You still there?”
“Meet you in the Medbay.” She terminated the call. A logo of the Sirius Corporation substituted the image of the man on the screen. Underneath, in the right bottom corner white numbers glowed on the light-blue background, 4:14 A.M.
(•••)
Rebecca stood in front of a large window. On the other side, a man lay on a cot, red, blue and green tubes coming out of his body, connecting him to the medibot. She touched the controls on the holoscreen which were projected onto the glass pane. A robot arm with a large orb at the end rose above the man and scanned the body from its head all the way down to the toes, passing a ray of blue laser light over it. A skeleton appeared on the screen. Next to it a string of text blinked:
Scanning for personal ID… Microchip found… Retrieving data…
The words disappeared. New ones replaced them:
Vasily Anatolyevich Kazakov, 39
Novaya Nadezhda, AF-235-B
Miner, level 4 security
The skeleton grew shape of a body, and a red dot at the back of the neck indicated the place where the microchip had been inserted. Rebecca turned the image around, zoomed out and looked for any fractures or anomalies and then manipulated the scanner into showing the internal organs of the survivor. A detailed map of blood vessels permeated the shape on the screen. Every contraction of a raisin-like shape in the man’s chest echoed into a beep on the speakers and revealed thin pulsating lines - each vein, artery and capillary.
With a quiet hiss a door slid open behind her and an elderly man came into the diagnostic’s room.
“Doctor,” Rebecca said politely, not taking the eyes away from the holoscreen.
“How are we doing?” he asked, stopping by her side and looking through the screen into the room where the man moved slightly and gave out a sigh.
“Still unconscious. Dehydrated and malnourished. But otherwise, there seems to be nothing wrong with him.”
She zoomed in and looked at the man’s brain, woven through and through with blood vessels, searching for arteriovenous malformations. Not finding any abnormalities, Rebecca turned her head towards the newcomer. Tall and lean, he was bearing his age as few men did. One could still see the remnants of the military past in his posture and the way he carried himself. It was no secret that more than half of the personnel on board the Syracusae had some kind of military training under their belts. The corporation preferred to keep their staff prepared. Just in case. No one ever did speak about what ‘the case’ they were prepared for was.
The doctor held his left arm to his chest, the elbow of the right one resting on it, with the fingers rubbing the short, neatly trimmed beard on his chin. Even though more than twenty-four hours had passed since he had had any sleep, his short hair the color of ashes was combed neatly to the back of the head and his clothes had not a single crease on them.
“Arthur is working on the blood and tissue samples in the lab. The analysis should be ready soon.”
She saw the man beside her nod once. Then silence filled the room, disturbed only by the beeping of the heartbeat monitor.
“Frank?” Rebecca turned away from the screen and spoke hesitantly.
The man seemed to have come out of a trance and stared Rebecca right in the eyes.
“How is it possible that an entire population of the colony di
sappeared without a trace?” A moment of cold silence hung in the air of the small room.
“Well, that is what we need to find out. Maybe we didn’t look good enough.” He kept silent for a moment and then continued. “I have spoken to the Captain about dispatching the second search party but,” he turned back to the patient still lying unconscious in the room behind the glass pane, “he wants to find out what we are dealing with here first. And for that we need this man to come to his senses and tell us all about it.”
Another kind of beeping filled the room, louder and more frequent. Rebecca turned back to face the screen. The vital signs showed a greater heart activity, the heartbeat line jolting up and down frenetically. Through the glass, she saw the man first move slightly and then his whole body started thrashing in a seizure.
Rebecca ran to the airlock and pressed the buttons on the access panel. A woman’s voice notified that the airlock was now pressurized and the metal door slid open, releasing a hiss of air coming out from the small containment area. Rebecca stepped inside. The door behind her closed and the same voice announced that the pressurization was in progress.
It took her just over a minute to get into the biosuit. It was made from a special synthetic fabric, strong enough to resist tears and at the same time light enough to allow an almost complete freedom of movement. The inner door of the quarantine area hissed open and Rebecca stepped into the room. She hurried towards the man.
“Nyet, nyet…” It seemed as if the man was