[Other Original] A Tempest in the Void

[Sprigatito]

Chapter One
Testing Testing, is this thing on?

Hello?

Ah, who cares, nobody is ever going to listen to this anyways.

My name is Hubert Rye and I'm a "private astrosecurity contractor", or what most would call a "space mercenary". I'm not partial to either term though, so anything's fine.

I was hired by the plasmodyne corporation, who, as far as I know, have never done anything with plasma. No, that would be too interesting for their hunk-of-junk stations.

They hired me to stay on station temporarily as a replacement security officer. The last one ran off, as the station was going onto lockdown because of an approaching supercharged mobile hydrogen cloud, or what those who hate large terms would call a nebula passing through.

It was a quick job with a major corporation, so it seemed relatively safe. Nobody ran off, besides some interns with actual career prospects, as it wouldn't be all that different from normal operation of this dead-end station.

I came in on the Voidstrider, a craft with an actually interesting name, unlike the station where I would be going. A68VORMS, what kind of a name is that!?

I was brought out of cryo-storage as we approached the station, and was given a moment to look at it as we rotated to reach its docking port.

The station was about quarter of a mile across, and shaped like a giant, thin, circle with a satellite connected by wires and catwalks in the middle. Basically, a giant space donut. Made of scrap metal and prayers. Plasmodyne called it "state of the art", which didn't ring true when you actually saw it.

I was already getting bored by the time we reached the station's only docking port, a small bay in the side of the ring. The pilot, who had been friendly before, now herded me out one of the doors gruffly, and wasted no time in undocking and drifting away into the void.

There was no welcoming party like I'd expected, no message from the AI on where I should go, not even a janitor ready to lead me around.

Damn what I would do for a janitor right now.

All I could hear was a voice talking down one of the hallways. I followed it, and found a woman talking on her phone.

"It'll take a while you say? It's already been years! How much more can a while be!"

She was almost shouting into her phone, clearly agitated. I closed the door behind me, and she whirled around, hiding her anger poorly.

"Oh! I haven't seen you around before! Who would you be? The new security? Mr. Rye?" She stammered out the entire conversations worth of words in a few seconds, then started leading me the way I'd come. I'd been walking in completely the wrong direction. How hard is it to put up a sign saying security?

She led my down to a pair of double doors, then sent me off, before I even realized-I had never even said a single word to her.

Past the doors lay a passage to an identical set of doors. You could see that the entire area was constantly monitored by multiple cameras, hidden poorly behind potted plants and the like.

Beyond the next set of doors was a massive waiting room, with a glass wall and the Plasmodyne logo across the floor. Couches and chairs hugged the walls. It was the most impressive room I'd seen yet. And completely empty. Where was everyone?

The security office was even larger than this, also containing an armory, a surveillance room, a small medical center, and…… officer quarters! Hooray!

One of them had my name marked! Pretty good communication for Plasmodyne, but I won't get into that. I stepped inside, my keycard opening this door like all the others.

"Oh, there you are!" Laughed a large, burly man behind me "I've been looking for you since the shuttle landed! Name's Clint, Clint Alst. I'm the head of security." He bellowed out the words before I could respond.

"Hello! Where is everybody?"

"Lunch of course! People work so long and hard here, so I usually have to step up security around now. The halls are so deserted that it's a haven for suspicious activity. I'll walk you over to the cafeteria, if you please."

"No, uh I'll get some sleep now"

The man had managed to reduce me to a confused mess with only a short conversation. That's the effect I'm supposed to have on people, dammit! It's my job!

I stepped inside my quarters, put down my bags, however few they were, and got comfortable. I fell asleep quickly and without dreams.


This is the start of an idea I've had bouncing around for a while. This is all I could write on my insomnia-based inspiration. Probably terrible, hope you like it.

 

[Sprigatito]

Have had this written for like a week, but never posted it



I woke to shouting just outside my quarters. I weakly flipped a light on and saw that it was two in the morning. Why couldn't they wait for a more reasonable time to have something happen.

I stumbled out of bed and toward the door, shaking the sleep out of my eyes. People ran by outside. Looks like all of security is up already.

I opened the door and beyond it was the main security room. The quarters were up on a second tier, with a viewing balcony surrounding the main area. I looked over the railing and saw people rushing to the camera room. I stumbled bleary-eyed down the steps and into the room where everyone else was.

The small room contained about twelve people, all that was needed for a station of only around three hundred. One wall was a massive television screen, with about a hundred displays from around the station. But that was not the center of attention. That would be a smaller screen on the right wall. It was only showing a single image.

The image was of two people in spacesuits floating side by side, in what appeared to be a maintenance shift with no gravity. They passed by a small door and went inside. The camera switched to show that they'd entered an airlock. They both got busy preparing for a spacewalk. It appeared that there was no sound, but neither of their faces could be seen, so it was unclear whether they were talking on a radio.

Both clipped in supplemental oxygen tanks, and one of them attached a tether to the interior of the airlock. Then, as the other reached for their own tether, the one who had already clipped in grabbed their tank! The other had clearly not been expecting this, and lost it after a brief struggle. The attacker delivered a kick to their chest, and made for the controls. The victim hit a wall and launched at their attacker. But, before they could fight back, both were pulled to the side and out of frame. It appeared that the airlock had been suddenly vented.

The attacker's tether fully unfurled, being pulled taught for a second, and then began to loosen. The attacker climbed back into the bay, holding both tanks, then closed it and went back through the door into maintenance.

I was unsurprisingly stunned by this, only being broken out of it by Clint's booming voice.

"This happened between 11:55 and 12:00 AM yesterday, during lunch and shortly after our guest arrived. The suits have internal air for around twenty minutes, and the person thrown out would've just kept floating without a tether."

"We believe the killed to have been one Mister Roberto Rosensteel, an EVA specialist working aboard this very ship." Said a younger security officer, likely Clint's second-in-command. "This occurred in a remote maintenance shift about an hour before the storm started, meaning that if he didn't suffocate then he would have died from that."

Clint took back over. "Why anyone would do this, and why they chose Mister Samuels, is under investigation."

I moved out of the room once it was clear that they were done talking. I then stepped into the main area and looked up. At the top of the room there was a skylight. Through it I could see a tumultuous soup of clouds, of a rainbow of colors, crashing and mixing soundlessly. The nebula.

Roberto Rosensteel

My head throbbed. The world swirled around me, a cacophonous, crashing bubble of color. I staggered--or tried to--before realizing I was falling. I panicked and flailed helplessly, before calming myself. I realized I was floating in the nebula, and looked around me. I saw, in what appeared to be "up" to me, the station floated, surrounded by a clear bubble.

I was outside.

The shield, I knew, was nigh-impenetrable and they would not risk opening it without knowing my location. I checked my spacesuit, and saw that I had only about ten minutes of air left. What could I do to call for help?

I checked and saw that I had no jetpack, nor a radio. Why hadn't I packed one before the airlock? Those last few minutes were fuzzy. Who had been next to me? What had we been talking about?

I heard something. Someone talking through my earpiece! I shouted through it for help, but the voice continued on. I realized that my earpiece must have been off. Without thinking I tried to flip it on, but my hand bounced off the side of my helmet. In anger I hit the side of my head, feeling the shock in my ear. I had an idea, and attempted to flip the switch on the side of the headset by rubbing it against the helmet.

Several minutes passed, but nothing gave. I tried to shout for my phone, on the off chance I had it and, with only three minutes left, it responded. I was floating just about still, so I checked my coordinates relative to the station and shouted them out. I then realized that I hadn't called anyone, so I racked my brains for someone. I would call… no names jumped out at me. I finally, with only a single minute left, decided. I would call Clint, the head of security!

I shouted to my phone to call him, and sputtered out my coordinates. Once that was done I realized that, with less than a minute left, there was no way they could get to me in time.

I lay back and resigned myself to my fate.