Crescent (2 page)

(Part I: 15 Years Later)

Gerald Evans tapped a floor vent with the toe of his boot.

The heat was blocked again.

Nothing but a vague whisper of warmth rose from between the metal slats, but Gerald was far too busy marveling at the backlog of messages that choked his communications terminal to worry about a blocked vent. Flushing the heating system was far from his mind. Much like with the vents, the
comm
system’s hard drive went months without regular purges. Even still, Gerald wondered why he had gone six months without a flush. He was bad, but not
that
bad.

Gerald hit the next page of messages. A video sat at the top of the queue.
Oh.
You again.
The communication was six months old, to the day, and was the very reason Gerald had put off cleaning out the system.
Liam’s last rites,
Gerald thought and frowned. The message was the last time he’d heard from his brother. Sure, he could’ve deleted the message or, just as easily, he could have saved the message, but both actions would have represented final acceptance that he’d never hear from Liam again. Instead, Gerald had let the message linger until he had all but forgotten that it was still there. Gerald hit play and sat back in the control couch. The monitor blanked and then filled with the image of his brother. Liam’s dark hair was just beginning to gray. His delicately creased features were bright with the flush and smile of hopeful anticipation. Liam’s wife stood at his side. Long, thickly braided hair hung over one bare shoulder and she held Gerald’s nephew in her arms. The kid was just scraping at the one year mark. Chubby fingers tugged at his mother’s braid; she kept pushing the small, pink hand away.

“Hey Gerry.
I was
hopin
’ you’d pick up,” his brother said. “We’ll be
outta
radio contact for a few weeks while we make this last cargo run and…
 
Man, that
feels weird to say. But, shit. This is it, little brother. The last
run,
and then retirement.” Liam smiled wide, as if he couldn’t contain his happiness. He paused and glanced at his wife and child and then returned his attention to the camera. “Look. Believe it or not, I didn’t call to give you a lecture. I know Mom always lays into you about this crap but, it
is
important. You haven’t saved a penny as far as any of us know. You’re not all that much younger than I am, Gerry. You can’t fly forever. The odds of something happening out there, they’re just not in our favor. Sooner or later…” Liam shook his head and smiled. “Ger, it’s never too early to start planning for retirement. So, that’s it. If I don’t get a chance to talk to you, be safe and be well. I’ll shoot you a line when we get to
Habeos
. Seriously, though, do call me back if you get a chance.”

“End of message,” the terminal stated in a clipped and metallic voice.
And end of the line, brother.

He noticed the lack of warmth, then.

Gerald Evans harbored no particular love for space. It was always cold. The chill possessed a knack for entering uninvited. Tenacious as hell, even the thickest of hulls couldn’t keep the cold out. It didn’t even knock.
The quiet—that was another thing.
Reinforced plating wouldn’t keep that silence out, either. Gerald Evans didn’t have a hard-on for space; but between the stars, the floating rocks, and the endless dust, lay the salvage. And hauling salvage was how Gerald made a living.

He reached out and removed one of several photographs taped to the control console. The snapshot showed a picture of Gerald, standing between Liam and his wife. How long ago had the picture been taken?
A year?
Maybe a little more?
Gerald laughed. He was nearly bald in the picture—a victim of a tragic haircut. His dark hair, previously thick and wavy, had been cropped so close to the skull that his scalp was visible. The playful ridicule from Liam and his wife had been without mercy.

That was the last time Gerald had actually seen Liam and his family.

He ran a hand over his head; the hair was longer again.

Liam and his family had never arrived in
Habeos
. The search for the missing cargo pilot and his family was given up after just two months; Gerald’s mom just didn’t have the money to pay for an extension, and Gerald was no help there, either. Space had claimed itself another victim—three of them, for the price of one.

But those were the odds.

Gerald had shed his tears and spent his time grieving. There was nothing left to do to but…

“Message deleted.”

(•••)

Crescent was visible through the front viewport. The station was a disembodied talon, black-silhouetted as it floated six hundred and fifty kilometers above the gray-green expanse of the planet
Anrar
III. Starships, appearing as tiny globes of light from Gerald’s current distance, came and went from the bulbous docking hub at the top of the sickle. Gerald waved his hand over a swatch of controls and engaged the final approach. He watched as Crescent grew larger in the octagonal glass viewport. The space station’s hull bore the scars of centuries of small impacts. The metallic skin was pockmarked and scorched in spots. In other places, old breaches were mended with a patchwork of scrap material.

The thrust of Gerald’s ship increased gently, pressing him into the control couch, and Crescent increased in size at an exponential rate. Before long, it was all Gerald could see out of the forward port. Weathered hull raced by at a blinding speed—so fast that he couldn’t make out any details. It was all a multi-colored blur. The ship shuddered as it slowed.

Melodic laughter chimed from the oblong speaker mounted above the control couch.

“Something funny?”
Gerald asked and looked around the empty bridge for a spilled cup of coffee, or maybe a stow-away space monkey come out of hiding.

“Yes. Would you like me to elaborate, Captain?” A metered baritone drifted from above his head—the voice of the ship’s computer.

“Yes, Bean.” Gerald could not put together why the previous owner of the tug class hauler had named the ship Bean, and Bean refused to elaborate.

“Thank you, Captain. I find it humorous that this is your fourth visit to Crescent in the past six months.”

“That tickles your circuits?” Gerald arched a brow.

“It does, Captain. You yourself said you’d never be caught dead on Crescent.”

“When did I ever say that to you?”

“You never said it to me directly, but you have said it on numerous ship-to-ship communications,” Bean commented.

“You always were one for eavesdropping, Bean.”

“It can’t be helped. It is my ears that you speak into ever so tenderly.”

Gerald grunted and glanced over at the main scanner overlay. A shimmering holographic projection floated to the right of the control couch. It showed a green schematic of the station and its relation to Bean’s tight orbit. A handful of colorful radar blips circled the image in three dimensions. The proximity indicator flashed the decreasing distance between Bean and the docking hub.

“Bean.
Open the
comm
channel to Crescent ATC.” Gerald paused. “On second thought, send the landing request for me, will you? I’m feeling antisocial.”

“When are you ever feeling social?” the computer asked.

There were a few seconds of silence before Bean spoke up again.

“Permission has been granted, Captain.”

 
A portal of brilliant light loomed ahead, making it impossible to see much of anything else. Bean glided toward the opening in a graceful pirouette. Silvery tethers uncoiled from dark compartments on the station-hub. There was a shudder as docking clamps on each tether’s end engaged. Bean was pulled into Crescent’s main hangar. And like that, the salvage hauler—proclaimed “Bean” in faded, stenciled letters—was no longer moving.

Gerald dropped from the small disembarkation porthole on the underside of Bean’s hull. It felt strange to be on a solid deck.
Stillness for the first time in three days.
The crawl is
gonna
get me,
Gerald thought.
The second my head hits that pillow.
The deep space equivalent to sea legs, the crawl was a persistent sensation of motion most pronounced after long trips between stars. Maritime folklore said a seafarer’s soul didn’t always reach the shore at the same time as his body; the sailor still felt the waves because his spirit remained at sea. When mankind sailed to the stars, the folklore traveled with him, nearly unchanged for thousands of years.

Gerald wondered if Bean felt anything similar to the crawl.
Doubtful.
Bean was, after all, only a ship.

A woman stood waiting on the hangar deck; her arms were crossed over the dark blue of her Crescent Security uniform. The blues, as they were called, were the standard Core Sec threads. Hers were embroidered with an arc of gold just above the Core Sec starburst insignia on the breast pocket to indicate her as a member of Crescent Station’s crew. The officer had dark hair, woven into a tight braid that fell down her back in a coil tighter than the docking lines that had pulled Bean in, leaving her pale face framed by a few stray ringlets. Her lips were set in a straight line. She was pretty—very pretty—and looked just as fierce. She had a mean-looking stun rod slung in a hip holster.
Typical welcoming party.
Gerald set his yellow duffle on the flight deck.

“Back so soon, Mr. Evans?” she asked.

“Officer Griffin.” He smiled. “Did you come to say hello or to break my stones?”

“Just checking for the usual, Gerry.
Weapons?”

“Just the widow makers.”
He balled his hands into fists and raised them.

She snorted a laugh and shook her head. He bowed with grace.

“It’s hard to believe you’re even real, Mr. Evans,” Griffin stated.

“Thank you very much. The 11:30 show is different than the 7:30,” he said, and bowed again. Although he joked, Gerald was no idiot. The weapons policy on any space station was strictly enforced. On Crescent it was a matter of life or death. A projectile traveling at near sonic could easily puncture Crescent’s old hull if it hit at the right weak spot. The station had a hard enough time maintaining pressure and atmosphere without having holes punched in her skin. Gerald raised his arms. “Commence the pleasuring, Officer Griffin.”

She smirked and waved a slender black wand up one side of his body, along his arm, and repeated the gesture on the other side.

As Officer Griffin scanned him, Gerald glanced down the length of the hangar deck. Black-clad members of some religious cult swarmed a merchant. No sooner had the fat bastard set foot off his ship than black leaflets were shoved into his face.
Every station has its crazies—especially this far out,
Gerald thought.
At least they’re not playing tambourines.
Even still, Gerald would be sure to avoid them all the same.

“Mayor Kendall would like to see you.”

“What’d you say?” He returned his attention the officer.

“Mayor Kendall would like to see you,” she repeated.

“Now?”
He looked to his duffle bag as she probed it with her magic contraband detection stick. “I’ve been dying for a shower and a shave these past few days. And I need to stow my sack of underpants and socks.” He gave the yellow duffle a shake.

Officer Griffin looked up at him with green eyes and batted her long lashes.

“Take it with
ya
,
pard
,” she said in a mock-drawl and then shrugged. “Like with most personal appointments from the Mayor’s office, it seemed important.”

Swell
, he thought. Getting summoned by Crescent’s Mayor, the de facto iron fist of the deep space outpost, smacked of getting called to the principal’s office—nothing good ever came of it.

(•••)

Gerald rejoined Officer Griffin on the other side of the decontamination causeway. Sound, light, and people exploded from everywhere he looked. His head spun. The second he stepped out of the DC he wanted to turn right around and head back to his ship. Main Street, Crescent Station blew the mind like a Euro-Chin firecracker after any length of time in the sensory isolation of space. The wide and vaulted station level was the nexus of station life. The chamber, roughly one square mile of metal, glass, and support pylons, was a mismatch of colorful tent-shops, bazaars, taverns, and people—lots and lots of people.

Light the color of salmon drifted from large sun globes suspended high above. Gerald had arrived just before the night cycle of the station. Activity on Main Street was ramping up and Gerald couldn’t seem to keep pace with Griffin as she wove through the crowd. They passed Heathen’s, Gerald’s favorite of the Crescent watering holes. Music and raucous laughter drifted through the brushed-chrome batwing doors, mingled with the fine stench of tobacco. A drink and a smoke was exactly what Gerald wanted. Officer Griffin turned to look over her shoulder, frowned, and grabbed him by the arm.

“Did you forget how to walk?” she asked.

“What? No.”